Modify an Existing PHP Function to Return a String

Modify an Existing PHP Function to Return a String

You can make use of output buffering^Docs to get the output of that function:

ob_start();
get_header();
$html = ob_get_clean();

If you need that more than once, you can wrap it into a function of it's own:

/**
 * call a function and return it's output as string.
 * 
 * @param callback $function
 * @param array $arguments (optional)
 * @param var $return (optional) the return value of the callback
 * @return string function output
 */
function ob_get_call($function, array $arguments = array(), &$return = NULL)
{
    ob_start();
    $return = call_user_func_array($function, $arguments);
    $buffer = ob_get_clean();
    return $buffer;
}

Usage:

$html = ob_get_call('get_header');

As the answer is that popular today, here is another function to get the output of an include:

/**
 * include a file and return it's output as string.
 * 
 * @param string $file
 * @param array $variables (optional) keys as variable names and values as variable values
 * @param var $includeReturn (optional) the return value of the include
 * @return string function output
 */
function ob_get_include($file, array $variables = array(), &$includeReturn = NULL)
{
    $includeFilename = $file;
    unset($file);
    extract($variables);
    unset($variables);
    ob_start();
    $includeReturn = include($includeFilename);
    return ob_get_clean();
}

Usage:

include.php:

<div class="greeting">
    Hello <em><?php echo htmlspecialchars($name); ?></em>!
</div>

Using:

$variables = array(
    'name' => 'Marianne',
);
$html = ob_get_include('include.php', $vars);

Related:

• Answer to *Load result of php code instead of the code as a string
• Answer to Is include()/require() with “side effects” a bad practice?

PHP Function to return string

You should simply store the return value in a variable:

$deliveryPrice = getDeliveryPrice(12);
echo $deliveryPrice; // will print 20

The $deliveryPrice variable above is a different variable than the $deliveryPrice inside the function. The latter is not visible outside the function because of variable scope.

Modify string, PHP

Something like this:

$final = substr($initial,0,4).'/'.substr($initial,4,2).'/'.substr($initial,6,2)

Use substr.

modify a method/function at runtime

Look into anonymous functions. If you can run PHP 5.3 that might be more along the lines of what you're trying to do.

PHP Modify a single line in a text file

This should works! :)

$file = "./users.txt";
$fh = fopen($file,'r+');

// string to put username and passwords
$users = '';

while(!feof($fh)) {

    $user = explode(',',fgets($fh));

    // take-off old "\r\n"
    $username = trim($user[0]);
    $password = trim($user[1]);

    // check for empty indexes
    if (!empty($username) AND !empty($password)) {
        if ($username == 'mahdi') {
            $password = 'okay';
        }

        $users .= $username . ',' . $password;
        $users .= "\r\n";
     }
}

// using file_put_contents() instead of fwrite()
file_put_contents('./users.txt', $users);

fclose($fh); 

Return Results of a Function Within a Variable to Change the Varible

I did manage to solve this.

${'omni'.posicionnavbar($tabs['position'])} .= $nuevo_tab;

thanks to PHP Cookbook

Knowing the proper symbols to link the variables together, I got rid of the switch and function altogether. The way I have this set up ${'omni'.$tabs['position']} .= $nuevo_tab; is enough to get the job done.

how to get the result from a php file into a string

<?php
ob_start();
include 'template.php';
$result = ob_get_clean()
?>

this should do, the $result is the string you need

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