Problem getting file contents

I'm trying to get the contents of a site hosted on a local server. Normally, I'd just do this:

file_get_contents("https://www.sampleurl.com")

Code (markup):

Unfortuantely, the function is unable to open the file for security purposes. Since the file is local, my next choice was to try this method:

file_get_contents("path/to/file.php")

Code (markup):

This time, the function doesn't work because I'm trying to get what the file would display rather than what the file actually contains. Imagine, for example, that file.php was this:

require("header.html");
require("content.html");
require("footer.html");

Code (markup):

I would only get the require statements using the file_get_contents function.

Finally, I tried this method:

echo "<div style='display:none'>";
require("path/to/file.php");
echo "</div>";

Code (markup):

But this doesn't return the text; rather, it executes the text and prints the results. The only way I can think of to recover this data would be using JavaScript.

It seems like there should be a compile a php file and store the text output in a variable, but for the life of me I can't figure it out. I'm open to any suggestions.

Thanks!

 

Actually, for the third method you can use ob_start:

ob_start();
require 'path/to/file.php';
$output = ob_get_contents();

PHP:

As far as the first method, you may want to check if your host supports curl..

// create a new cURL resource
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://www.example.com/");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$output = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

PHP:

 

The host doesn't support curl, but the ob_start() / ob_get_clear() method worked perfectly!

I can't even express how much time and stress you just saved me. Thanks for your help!