CODEWITHSUNDEEP
php
Yoshiyahu
Yoshiyahu

Reputation: 2158

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

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?

Upvotes: 12

Views: 64009

Answers (6)

KoE
KoE

Reputation: 237

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

  1. Using with the full url will yield 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');

Upvotes: 24

Jose G&#243;mez
Jose G&#243;mez

Reputation: 3224

In my case, none of the solutions posted worked for me. Only the comment by Ondřej Mirtes worked. I wanted to execute a script, passing some parameters:

anotherscript.php?param=value

So, the solution was to use cURL:

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http".( ($_SERVER["HTTPS"] == "on")?'s':'' )."://".$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].dirname($_SERVER['PHP_SELF'])."/anotherscript.php?param=value");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$output = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

Upvotes: 0

Andrei
Andrei

Reputation: 882

I want to create pdf from existing .php files.
From answers above i have 3 options:
1.rewrite .php files
2.use buffering:

$_GET["id"]="4";
ob_start();
include 'test.php';
$TextPDF = ob_get_clean();

3.get data by url:

$serv = "http".( ($_SERVER["HTTPS"] == "on")?'s':'' )."://".$_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"];
$TextPDF = file_get_contents($serv.'/test.php?id=4');

I think i will use third option, then i don't have to modify existing files.

Upvotes: -1

Dan
Dan

Reputation: 5637

You could use the file_get_contents method, this returns a string containing the contents of the page you request - http://php.net/manual/en/function.file-get-contents.php

$contents = file_get_contents('http://www.stackoverflow.com/');
echo $contents;

Upvotes: 8

mfonda
mfonda

Reputation: 7993

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

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

Upvotes: 9

Marc B
Marc B

Reputation: 360672

ob_start();
include('otherpage.php');
$output = ob_get_clean();

A better method would be to encapsulate whatever's being done in that other page as a function, which you can then call from both pages. This lets you reuse the code without having to mess around with output buffering and whatnot.

Upvotes: 5

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