Proper way to get the base path when including an image from a module?

Question

When using just drupal_get_path() to include an image from a module directory, this produces non-existent urls when using language prefixes.

I've seen a couple of modules prepend base_path() to deal with this, but on the api page for base_path() someone comments that you should use the DRUPAL_ROOT constant. What is the recommended way?

Answer 1

Drupal core uses file_create_url() for internal images like this (eg, the default favicon.ico handling in includes/theme.inc).

This ensures that hook_file_url_alter() gets called (the CDN module does this), that the basepath gets set, and that everything is escaped properly.

So, I would use

$path = drupal_get_path('module', 'mymodle');
$url = file_create_url($path . '/images/some.jpg');

Answer 2

You could use

theme_image

e.g:

  $variables = array(
    'path' => drupal_get_path('module', 'my_module').'/images/image.jpg', 
    'alt' => 'My image',
    'title' => 'My image title',
    'attributes' => array('class' => array('my-image')),
  );
  $img = theme('image', $variables);

Answer 3

You should use $base_url with drupal_get_path().

global $base_url;
$img_path = $base_url . '/' . drupal_get_path('module', 'YOUR_MODULE') . '/images/your_image.png';

In this way the image path won't be affected by i18n site url prefix settings.

Answer 4

Use the System stream wrapper module. It gives you a module://, theme:// and profile:// stream wrapper. These wrappers will (probably) be part of D8 core.

Answer 5

Sometime you may need to pass a NULL langage in the url function.

Example from commerce_paypal

Not working link (original code)

  return url(drupal_get_path('module', 'commerce_paypal_ec') . '/images/paypal-ec-logo.gif', array('absolute' => TRUE));

Working link (hacked code)

  return url(drupal_get_path('module', 'commerce_paypal_ec') . '/images/paypal-ec-logo.gif', array('absolute' => TRUE, 'language' => ""  ));

Note: Hacking contributed modules is never reccomanded, of course.