How do you define a PHP include as a string?

Question

I tried:

$test = include \'test.php\';

But that just included the file normally

Answer 1

The other answers, for reasons unknown to me, don't quite reach the correct solution.

I suggest using the buffer, but you have to get the contents and then clean the buffer before the end of the page, otherwise it is outputted. Should you wish to use the output from the included file, you should use op_get_contents(), which will return a string of the contents of the buffer.

You also don't need to loop over the includes as each will just add to the buffer (unless you clean it first).

You therefore could use the following;

ob_start();
include_once('test.php');
include_once('test2.php');
$contents = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();

Hope this helps.