"including" without using the "include" statement

MarkB423

I am curious what the most efficient way to include a file into a program (such as a header or footer file) without parsing any PHP. This is important when using Zend Encoder and utilizing the option to not permit any unencoded files from being included into the program.

My solution would be to use the "fread" function on the header or footer file and simply print the string.

Let me know if someone has a better solution, and whether my solution is a performance concern as compared to just a normal "include" statement.

Thanks,

~Mark

bad76

Hi,
have you looked server side include ??
May be this is the real faster solution...

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/howto/ssi.html

see you

MarkB423

Well, i definitely need PHP to be parsed in the body of the page, but in the header and footer i do NOT want the PHP to be parsed. At most, I would do a "str_replace" on certain tags that can be inserted into the header and footer (such as the current date/time). So I don't believe SSI is the solution here... it must be PHP.

Thanks,

~Mark

drawmack

I believe the way the engine works is if there are no <? ?> tag sets then the interpreter is never fired off. I also think it may be good to look into file additionally if you're on appache you can configure that to append the header and footer files for you without them being parsed by the php engine.

MarkB423

I think I wasn't very clear at my intentions. I plan on encoding a program using the Zend Encoder, but I will need to utilize the option called "Work only with encoded files" in order to prevent my license enforcement code from being replaced with a non-paying hacker's own code.

Now, the problem is that I still need to allow for a header and footer file to be included, but these files will not be encoded, so it won't work unless I actually read in the file. Also, keep in mind that I do not want any PHP to be parsed from this header and footer file, since it is possible that the user could write code to bypass the license enforcement code.

But, then again, it could be permissible to allow PHP to be execute as long as the license enforcement is above the header and footer (but I'm not sure how I could do that if I have everything in the form of a string).

So, is there a better way to include a file as I mentioned (without using "include" or "require") and is there a way to actually parse the PHP from a string when the string will contain either HTML or PHP? I'm not sure if the "eval" function would work like this.

Thanks,

~Mark

tekky

$myfile = file('filename.html');
echo $myfile;

MarkB423

Will the PHP be parsed using that technique?

HalfaBee

The php won't be parsed, but the HTML will be.
Also use file_get_contents() instead of file().

If you want to execute the php in the script use eval() , but I don't think you want to do that.

HalfaBee