Re: include as string

Harris Kosmidhs wrote:
Hello,

I have a php file like the following:
<?php foreach($res as $album) { ?>
<div class="albums">
<div class="left albumimage">
<a href="album/<?php echo $album["id"] ;?>">
<img alt="<?php echo $album["title"]; ?>" title="<?php echo $album["title"]; ?>" src="<?php echo "../".$photosdir.$album["photo"]; ?>">
</a>
</div>
<?php } ?>

I call this file from a function :
function ListAlbums($res) {
include('views/albums_view.php');
}

Before this I have opened a sql query and $res has the resultset. So my pages renders correctlly for each of the rows on $res.

But now I want for this file not to be printed directly (as include does) but rather store the output to a string. As I read at http://us3.php.net/include/ I did:

function ListAlbums($res) {
ob_start();
include('views/albums_view.php');
$disp=ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
return $disp;
}

But $res now seems to be empty. Why doesn't this approach work? If I print_r($res) into my function it returns of course data.

thanks


I'm not sure why it shouldn't work. However, there is a better way to do this.

First of all, the code in your included file should itself be a function. Then, rather than outputting the html right there, put it into a string, and return the string, i.e.

<?php
function myfunc($res, $photosdir) {
$str = '';
foreach($res as $album) {
$str .= <<<EOT
<div class="albums">
<div class="left albumimage">
<a href="album/{$album["id"]}">
<img alt="{$album["title"]}" title="{$album["title"]}"
src="../{$photosdir}{$album["photo"]}">
</a>
</div>
EOT;
}
return $str;
}


Now in the calling routine you have the option of echoing the string or not, i.e.

echo $myfunc($res, $photosdir);
or

$str = $myfunc($res, $photosdir);

You can now include the file at the top of your page and call it from where ever you need it.

--
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Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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