insert file containing php code into a variable as string

Question

I have this:

  ob_start();                     ?>
          <div class="" id="loading">
               <?php echo file_get_contents($page["texto"]) ?> 
          </div>      <?php

  $content = ob_get_clean();

But I would like to have that template html in a separate file, just like:

$content = file_get_contents('cms/template.php');

Now this won't work because it has php tags inside and when retrieving the string it gets as

how can I achieve this without using a dirty hack like:

$pre = file_get_contents('part1');
$var = file_get_contents($page["texto"]);
$post = file_get_contents('part2');

And adding all them...

Community · Accepted Answer · 2023-11-17 19:24:28Z

3

It's still hack, but unless you use a templating system like Twig you have no choice:

ob_start();
include 'cms/template.php';
$content = ob_get_clean();

echo $content;

ob_start enables output buffering so nothing gets sent to the browser. We then include the file which will execute PHP normally. We then use ob_get_clean to get the contents of the output buffer (which is your template file). and disable the output buffer, discarding it's contents, as we have the contents in $content.

edited Nov 17, 2023 at 19:24

CommunityBot

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answered Apr 15, 2014 at 16:01

Brandon - Free Palestine

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4 Comments

Cristo Over a year ago

That was so stupidly easy... It worked fine! I couldn't figure that mixing include and ob_ would work like that... I'm accepting your anwser in 7 mins

TecBrat Over a year ago

I don't consider that a hack. You're taking advantage of PHP's features. You have some text that needs to be processed and stored, but not displayed. The ob_* set of functions is perfect for that.

Brandon - Free Palestine Over a year ago

@TecBrat I know, it's pretty much the best solution we have. I just wish PHP had a function like include/require that returned output as a variable so we didn't have to do this.

Cristo Over a year ago

Still much better than making it in three files. tyvm

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