PHP Eval that evaluates HTML & PHP

Question

I\'m messing around with templating and I\'ve run into a situation where I need to echo to the browser a template that contains html & php. How do I evaluate the PHP and

Answer 1

$contents = htmlentities($contents);
echo html_entity_decode(eval($contents));

Answer 2

In case you are trying to do this with a string of mixed HTML/PHP (like from a database, as I was), you can do it this way:

eval(' ?>'.$htmlandphp.'<?php ');

More info: http://blog.5ubliminal.com/posts/eval-for-inline-php-inside-html/ (note this is a dead link as of 2014-3-3)

Answer 3

The best solution in your case is to combine eval and output buffer

// read template into $contents
// replace {title} etc. in $contents
$contents = str_replace("{title}", $title, $contents);
ob_start();
    eval(" ?>".$contents."<?php ");
$html .= ob_get_clean();
echo html;

Answer 4

Do not read the file, but include it and use output bufferig to capture the outcome.

ob_start();
include 'main.php';
$content = ob_get_clean();

// process/modify/echo $content ...

Edit

Use a function to generate a new variable scope.

function render($script, array $vars = array())
{
    extract($vars);

    ob_start();
    include $script;
    return ob_get_clean();
}

$test = 'one';
echo render('foo.php', array('test' => 'two'));
echo $test; // is still 'one' ... render() has its own scope

Answer 5

Use output buffering instead. eval() is notoriously slow.

main.php:

<div id="container">
    <div id="title"><?php echo $title; ?></div><!-- you must use PHP tags so the buffer knows to parse it as such -->
    <div id="head">
        <?php if ($id > 10): ?>
            <H3>Greater than 10!</H3>
        <?php else: ?>
            <H3>Less than 10!</H3>
        <?php endif ?>
    </div>
</div>

---

Your file:

$title = 'Lorem Ipsum';
$id = 11;

ob_start();
require_once('main.php');
$contents = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();

echo $contents;

The output of this will be:

Lorem Ipsum

Greater than 10!