Is there any way to return HTML in a PHP function? (without building the return value as a string)

seanyboy_1726 0
Viewed 144955

I have a PHP function that I'm using to output a standard block of HTML. It currently looks like this: 

<?php function TestBlockHTML ($replStr) { ?>
    <html>
    <body><h1> <?php echo ($replStr) ?> </h1>
    </html>
<?php } ?>

I want to return (rather than echo) the HTML inside the function. Is there any way to do this without building up the HTML (above) in a string?

templating php string
8 Answers

You can use a heredoc, which supports variable interpolation, making it look fairly neat:

function TestBlockHTML ($replStr) {
return <<<HTML
    <html>
    <body><h1>{$replStr}</h1>
    </body>
    </html>
HTML;
}

Pay close attention to the warning in the manual though - the closing line must not contain any whitespace, so can't be indented.

Paul_Dixon_65210

Yes, there is: you can capture the echoed text using ob_start:

<?php function TestBlockHTML($replStr) {
    ob_start(); ?>
    <html>
    <body><h1><?php echo($replStr) ?></h1>
    </html>
<?php
    return ob_get_clean();
} ?>
user_19680

Create a template file and use a template engine to read/update the file. It will increase your code's maintainability in the future as well as separate display from logic.

An example using Smarty:

Template File

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
<head><title>{$title}</title></head>
<body>{$string}</body>
</html>

Code

function TestBlockHTML(){
  $smarty = new Smarty();
  $smarty->assign('title', 'My Title');
  $smarty->assign('string', $replStr);
  return $smarty->render('template.tpl');
}
Rob_551510

If you don't want to have to rely on a third party tool you can use this technique:

function TestBlockHTML($replStr){
  $template = 
   '<html>
     <body>
       <h1>$str</h1>
     </body>
   </html>';
 return strtr($template, array( '$str' => $replStr));
}
user_31263410

Or you can just use this:

<?
function TestHtml() { 
# PUT HERE YOU PHP CODE
?>
<!-- HTML HERE -->

<? } ?>

to get content from this function , use this : 

<?= file_get_contents(TestHtml()); ?>

That's it :)

user_96082850

Template File

<h1>{title}</h1>
<div>{username}</div>

PHP

if (($text = file_get_contents("file.html")) === false) {
    $text = "";
}

$text = str_replace("{title}", "Title Here", $text);
$text = str_replace("{username}", "Username Here", $text);

then you can echo $text as string

user_57190380
Related