Magento 2: Base Directories

Another consequence of losing the global Mage class in Magento 2 is the loss of the getBaseDir method. Fortunatly, the team behind Magento 2 has a solution, the MagentoAppDir object. You can use this object to get the base directory of your Magento system.

$object_manager = MagentoCoreModelObjectManager::getInstance();
$dir = $object_manager->get('MagentoAppDir');            
$base = $dir->getDir();

var_dump($base);

The obejct also comes with a set of constants for finding specific base dirs, and not just the Magento system’s base directory. For example, the following will find the base media folder

$object_manager = MagentoCoreModelObjectManager::getInstance();
$dir = $object_manager->get('MagentoAppDir');            
$base = $dir->getDir(MagentoAppDir::MEDIA);

var_dump($base);

The Dir object also has a getUri method. This method finds a path suitable for use in an http string. Doing something like this

$object_manager = MagentoCoreModelObjectManager::getInstance();
$dir = $object_manager->get('MagentoAppDir');            
$base = $dir->getUrl(MagentoAppDir::MEDIA);

var_dump($base);

will return either the string media, or the string pub/media (depending on which index.php bootstrap file you’re using). If you try to use the getUri method with a constant that doesn’t make sense, the method returns false.

$object_manager = MagentoCoreModelObjectManager::getInstance();
$dir = $object_manager->get('MagentoAppDir');            
$base = $dir->getUri(MagentoAppDir::GENERATION);

var_dump($base);

For a full list of directory type constants see the lib/Magento/App/Dir.php source file

#File: lib/Magento/App/Dir.php
/**
 * Code base root
 */
const ROOT = 'base';

/**
 * Most of entire application
 */
const APP = 'app';

/**
 * Modules
 */
const MODULES = 'code';

/**
 * Themes
 */
const THEMES = 'design';

/**
 * Initial configuration of the application
 */
const CONFIG = 'etc';

/**
 * Libraries or third-party components
 */
const LIB = 'lib';

/**
 * Files with translation of system labels and messages from en_US to other languages
 */
const LOCALE = 'i18n';

/**
 * Directory within document root of a web-server to access static view files publicly
 */
const PUB = 'pub';

/**
 * Libraries/components that need to be accessible publicly through web-server (such as various DHTML components)
 */
const PUB_LIB = 'pub_lib';

/**
 * Storage of files entered or generated by the end-user
 */
const MEDIA = 'media';

/**
 * Storage of static view files that are needed on HTML-pages, emails or similar content
 */
const STATIC_VIEW = 'static';

/**
 * Public view files, stored to avoid repetitive run-time calculation, and can be re-generated any time
 */
const PUB_VIEW_CACHE = 'view_cache';

/**
 * Various files generated by the system in runtime
 */
const VAR_DIR = 'var';

/**
 * Temporary files
 */
const TMP = 'tmp';

/**
 * File system caching directory (if file system caching is used)
 */
const CACHE = 'cache';

/**
 * Logs of system messages and errors
 */
const LOG = 'log';

/**
 * File system session directory (if file system session storage is used)
 */
const SESSION = 'session';

/**
 * Dependency injection related file directory
 *
 */
const DI = 'di';

/**
 * Relative directory key for generated code
 */
const GENERATION = 'generation';

/**
 * Temporary directory for uploading files by end-user
 */
const UPLOAD = 'upload';