How do you define a PHP include as a string?

Question

I tried:

$test = include 'test.php'; 

But that just included the file normally

Answer 1

You'll want to look at the output buffering functions.

//get anything that's in the output buffer, and empty the buffer $oldContent = ob_get_clean();  //start buffering again ob_start();  //include file, capturing output into the output buffer include "test.php";  //get current output buffer (output from test.php) $myContent = ob_get_clean();  //start output buffering again. ob_start();  //put the old contents of the output buffer back echo $oldContent; 

EDIT:

As Jeremy points out, output buffers stack. So you could theoretically just do something like:

<?PHP function return_output($file){     ob_start();     include $file;     return ob_get_clean(); } $content = return_output('some/file.php'); 

This should be equivalent to my more verbose original solution.

But I haven't bothered to test this one.

Answer 2

Try something like:

ob_start(); include('test.php'); $content = ob_get_clean();