Is there any way to know if the file was included or loaded directly?

GetCategories.php

<?php
require_once "Connection.php";

$query = mysqli_query($connection, "SELECT * FROM CATEGORIES");
$array = array();

while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($query))
    $array[] = $row;

//Execute this code only if was loaded directly
echo json_encode($array, JSON_NUMERIC_CHECK);

Is there any way to know if the GetCategories.php file was included or loaded directly?

I found a lot of similar questions but can’t find any helpful answers.

>Solution :

There are many ways, bound to be a duplicate. One way if your not using any URL rewriting, is to check the name of the file against the file that is called. Here’s one way to do that:

if(basename(__FILE__) == basename($_SERVER['PHP_SELF'])) {
    //direct
} else {
    //included
}

1. __FILE__ returns the actual file path on disk of the file, such as /var/www/mysite/GetCategories.php
2. $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] returns the current file loaded from the webserver, such as mysite/GetCategories.php or mysite/index.php

If they are the same, then it was loaded directly. If they are not the same then the file from 2 above included the file from 1.