Include files outside of domain name

mrgrammar

I got curious about includes and started experimenting with an idea.

On my site, www.xyz.com, I can include a page from another site, www.efg.com, and it shows that whole page. In other words, the only code on www.xyz.com/page.php would be:

include "http://www.efg.com/pagename.htm";

and www.xyz.com/page.php displays www.efg.com/pagename.htm.

Of course, I don't need to display pages from other web sites, but the ability to do so got me thinking. I have several web sites that share the same set of code. All the sites are located on the same physical server although they have different domain names. It would be helpful to edit one time and affect all of the sites. Therefore, I set up a code page in a central location and referenced it from an external domain.

Central location, www.central.com/code.php has the code:

$number = $a + $b;

External location, www.xyz.com/index.php, includes the page from the Central Location.

$a = 5;
$b = 2;
include "http://www.central.com/code.php";
echo $number;

Here's the problem: code.php does not recognize the variables $a and $b. I did find that code.php will recognize variables passed in the include statement:

include "http://www.central.com/code.php?a=5&b=2";

And index.php does not recognize the variable $number that should come from the central location (code.php). Therefore, $number does not display on index.php.

My assumption was including the file from code.php would execute the code as if it were part of index.php. Why won't the variables work like I want them to?

bpat1434

The PHP Manual wrote:
When a file is included, parsing drops out of PHP mode and into HTML mode at the beginning of the target file, and resumes again at the end. For this reason, any code inside the target file which should be executed as PHP code must be enclosed within valid PHP start and end tags.

Are you wrapping the code in <?php ?> tags or not? Your example says no....

Also note:

The PHP Manual wrote:
Security Warning
Remote file may be processed at the remote server (depending on the file extension and the fact if the remote server runs PHP or not) but it still has to produce a valid PHP script because it will be processed at the local server. If the file from the remote server should be processed there and outputted only, [man]readfile/man is much better function to use. Otherwise, special care should be taken to secure the remote script to produce a valid and desired code.

Of course if you read down in the notes, someone mentions that using [man]fopen/man with [man]fread/man is 55% faster than [man]readfile/man. The other plus is that readfile, you get just the code in the output buffer, with fread you get it as a string so you can [man]eval/man the code....