Return html response from PHP page in to variable

Question

I am trying to generate an email with some HTML that is created via another PHP file.

Email generating file is run by a cron running every hour. Another file exists that

Answer 1

Check out the built-in functions ob_start and ob_get_clean.

You can then do something like:

ob_start();
include( "file.php");
$var = ob_get_clean();

Answer 2

If I understood what you said, you can use output buffering, so that you can get the output of htmlGenerator.php

For example:

ob_start();
// as an example
echo "Hello World";
// or in our case
include "htmlGenerator.php";
$result = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();

You can also create a simple function like this:

function include_output($filename)
{
    ob_start();
    include $filename;
    $contents = ob_get_contents();
    ob_end_clean();
    return $contents;
}

$mycontent = include_output("htmlGenerator.php");

Read the php documentation for further details.