How to PHP call another page and get output as variable?

Question

I would like to call a PHP page from a PHP page, and return the output of the page I called as a single variable.

require would not suit my purposes as I need the output stored as a variable for later use, rather than outputting it immediately.

IE:

page1.php
<?php

echo 'Hello World!<br>';
$output = call_page('page2.php');
echo 'Go for it!<br>';
echo $output;

?>

page2.php
<?php

echo "Is this real life?<br>";

?>

Would output:

Hello World!
Go for it!
Is this real life?

Answer 1

To clear up some confusion when using file_get_contents(), note that:

1. Using with the full url will yeild the html output of the page:

   $contents = file_get_contents('http://www.example-domain.com/example.php');
   

2. While using it with file path will get you the source code of the page:

   $contents = file_get_contents('./example.php');
   

Answer 2

require is actually exactly what you want (in combination with output buffering):

ob_start();
require 'page2.php';
$output = ob_get_clean();