Php Return Contents of an Include as String

Overview

Sometimes you may want to get the contents of a file after it has been parsed by the PHP interpreter. This function uses output buffering to capture the contents of an included file and returns the result as a string. The function definition is taken verbatim from the PHP include manual page.

/**
 * Returns the contents of an include as a string.
 */
function get_include_contents($filename) {
    if (is_file($filename)) {
        ob_start();
        include $filename;
        return ob_get_clean();
    }
    return false;
}

References

PHP: include - Manual | http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.include.php