urgent: ouput buffers, includes and globals what's wrong here?

[BrianPeiris]

Hello everybody,
I'm new here but I'm a novice with PHP. I've been racking my brain for the past couple of hours with this problem, so I hope you can help me out.

So I've got two PHP files, one file (test1.php) [i]includes[/i] the parsed contents of the other (test2.php) using the output buffer functions (ob_start, ob_get_contents, ob_end_clean).
The special condition is that test2.php uses a global variable in its code.
It seems to work, except when I refactor the code in test1.php into a function, it stops working.

Here's a test case:
[url=http://brianpeiris.com/test/test1.php?work=1]http://brianpeiris.com/test/test1.php?work=1[/url] - This link shows the output of the working code.
[url=http://brianpeiris.com/test/test1.php?work=0]http://brianpeiris.com/test/test1.php?work=0[/url] - This link shows the output of the broken code.
Here are the source files:
[url=http://brianpeiris.com/test/test1.php.txt]http://brianpeiris.com/test/test1.php.txt[/url]
[url=http://brianpeiris.com/test/test2.php.txt]http://brianpeiris.com/test/test2.php.txt[/url]

The problem occurs on both PHP4 and PHP5.

TIA, Brian.

[ksteuber]

Ok
I think I've figure this one out (it took me a while)

Let me rewrite your code the way it is executed:

[code]
<?php
$file='test2.php';
function get_include_contents($filename)
{
ob_start();
        //include($file);
        $tempVar = " HELLO!";  //This varible is defined in the function definition get_include_contents
        function doTest()
        {
      global $tempVar;
      echo $tempVar;
        }
        doTest();
$contents = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
return $contents;
}


if($_GET['work'])
{
echo "This works!";
ob_start();
//include($file);
        $tempVar = " HELLO!"; //This variable is defined outside of any function definitions in test1.php
        function doTest()
        {
      global $tempVar;
      echo $tempVar;
        }
        doTest();
$contents = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
}
else
{
echo "This doesn't work!";
$contents = get_include_contents($file);
}
echo($contents);
?>
[/code]

Now when you look at it this way, it becomes clear that inside test1.php:get_include_contents:doTest,
[code]global $tempVar;[/code]
is looking to see if $tempVar has been defined in test1.php. Since it is not, $tempvar continues to equal "".

Did I say that right?

[BrianPeiris]

AH! you are absolutely correct. well done, that makes things much clearer!
In fact, thanks to you, I found a solution:

[code]
<?php
$_GET['work']=0;
$file='test2.php';
function get_include_contents($filename)
{
ob_start();
        //include($file);
        $GLOBALS['tempVar'] = " HELLO!";
        function doTest()
        {
      global $tempVar;
      echo $tempVar;
        }
        doTest();
$contents = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
return $contents;
}


if($_GET['work'])
{
echo "This works!";
ob_start();
//include($file);
        $GLOBALS['tempVar'] = " HELLO!";
        function doTest()
        {
      global $tempVar;
      echo $tempVar;
        }
        doTest();
$contents = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
}
else
{
echo "This doesn't work!";
$contents = get_include_contents($file);
}
echo($contents);
?>
[/code]

Now 'tempVar' is truly defined in the global scope and not just in the scope of 'get_include_contents'.
Thanks again!