Making all PHP file output pass through a “filter file” before being displayed

Question

Is there any way for all my PHP and/or HTML file output to be \"filtered\" before being displayed in the browser? I figured that I could pass it through a global function b

Answer 1

Check out ob_start which lets you pass a callback handler for post-processing your script output.

For example, PHP includes a built-in callback ob_gzhandler for use in compressing the output:

This should be a compressed page.

Here's a fuller example illustrating how you might tidy your HTML with the tidy extension:

function tidyhtml($input)
{
    $config = array(
           'indent'         => true,
           'output-xhtml'   => true,
           'wrap'           => 200);

    $tidy = new tidy;
    $tidy->parseString($input, $config, 'utf8');
    $tidy->cleanRepair();

    // Output
    return $tidy;
}

ob_start("tidyhtml");

//now output your ugly HTML

If you wanted to ensure all your PHP scripts used the same filter without including it directly, check out the auto_prepend_file configuration directive.