PHP file_get_contents with php intact?

Question

As opposed to using an include, which executes the included php in the file...is it possible to save the contents of a php file to a variable - but with the php still intact and

Answer 1

How about this...

function getTemplate($file) {

    ob_start(); // start output buffer

    include $file;
    $template = ob_get_contents(); // get contents of buffer
    ob_end_clean();
    return $template;

}

Basically, this will get whatever $file is, and parse it with PHP, then return the output into a variable.