Basic php template thing will not display correctly

Ok, so far this is getting quite fustrating, I am trying to make a very very basic template system to take out some of the repetitive coding for my projects but this code is not working at all.

Global.php

<?php $header = include('templates/header.php'); ?>

PHP:

index.php

<?php $header ?>

PHP:

header.php

This is the header.

PHP:

What is output
This is the header. 1
Where is that one coming from, I have several other templates and every time I add them with the same procedure it will display the code in the wrong display order and always add an extra 1 at the end of the page.

 

maybe

<?php $header = file_get_contents('templates/header.php'); ?>

PHP:

Or AFAIK include can return values but you need to use return keyword inside of included files.

 

how the php statements in my template no longer works, any solution?

 

Just put

<?php include('templates/header.php'); ?>

Code (markup):

in index.php. You may need to adjust the path for "templates/header.php" though.

In your case you can even just put

<?php include('templates/header.php'); ?>

Code (markup):

in Global.php. Although that is not recommended though.

 

yes but I am working with a group of people who no nothing of web design but I am supposed to work with them for a school project. Instead of having them insert that php statement I would want to just make it so all they had to do was insert the $header instead of the $header = includes('templates/header.php');

 

if that's the case then you can use Ashine's code in Global.php

<?php $header = file_get_contents('templates/header.php'); ?>

Code (markup):

Then use this in index.php

<?php echo $header; ?>

Code (markup):

This works if header.php only contains text and without any PHP code.

If you have php code inside header.php, then you can do something like this in Global.php

<?php
ob_start();
include('templates/header.php');
$header = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
?>

Code (markup):

Hope that helps

 

Thank you, your 2nd solution was the exact thing i needed. Now just gotta figure out a more effective method to do this for about 50 different includes, or do I have to do this for each one?

any way I can make this automatically do this for all files in a directory?

<?php
ob_start();
include('templates/header.php');
$header = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
?>

PHP:

 

Yes you can. You can even do it if its in different directory. Just need to add a static path or a relative path to it. If all your files already included Global.php, then you only need to put <?php echo $header; ?> on each file.

e.g. index.php

<?php
include('Global.php');
echo $header;
?>

Code (markup):

 

that doesn't do what i need it to as it displays the content not where i want it to.