How to read a .php file using php
3 Answers
Let's say you have two files a.php and b.php on same folder.
Code on the file b.php
<?php
echo "hi";
?>
and code on a.php
<?php
$data = file_get_contents('b.php');
echo $data;
You access a.php on browser.
What do you see? A blank page.
Please check the page source now. It is there.
But not showing in browser as <?php is not a valid html tag. So browser can not render it properly to show as output.
<?php
$data = htmlentities(file_get_contents('b.php'));
echo $data;
Now you can see the output in browser.
Comments
If you want to get the content generated by PHP, then
$data = file_get_contents('http://host/path/file.php');
If you want to get the source code of the PHP file, then
$data = file_get_contents('path/file.php');
Remember that file_get_contents() will not work if your server has *allow_url_fopen* turned off.
3 Comments
silverdr
I need to get the content generated by PHP as in your first example but without using web server and HTTP requests. Any ideas how to achieve this?
Linga
Why do you want to do this? Of course, if you have the file locally you can directly open and see the content. FYI, PHP is running on a web server. You are trying to so something which isn't possible
silverdr
I want to (write tests, which) verify that the content I get over HTTP request is exactly what I expect it to be. Obviously with dynamic parts being processed. I can't compare the source file to the HTTP response body. I need to compare the processed output without using HTTP with the same sent over HTTP. You may also ask why would I want to do this. A short answer: because I need ;-) A longer one: In order to make sure that problems with a third party middleware outside my domain do not happen again unnoticed.
//get the real path of the file in folder if necessary
$path = realpath("/path/to/myfilename.php");
//read the file
$lines = file($path,FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES);
Each line of the 'myfilename.php' will be stored as a string in the array '$lines'. And then, you may use all string functions in php. More info about available string functions is available here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.strings.php
includethe file, no?