Question

I am working with an annoyingly complicated Joomla! site and having to do some customisation to the layout at the code level.

My problem is finding what files to edit.

So, given a certain page, can I log a list of files that get opened during the parsing of it?

Answer 1

Tada, here it is: https://www.php.net/get+included+files get_included_files()

The comment in the documentation regarding only getting the directly included files is wrong. You always get ALL files included up to the point of execution, regardless of where you make the call to the function.

fileB.php
<?php
include 'fileB.php';

fileB.php
<?php
include 'fileC.php

fileC.php
<?php
var_dump(get_included_files());

Output:

array(3) {
  [0] =>
  string(18) "/path/to/fileA.php"
  [1] =>
  string(18) "/path/to/fileB.php"
  [2] =>
  string(18) "/path/to/fileC.php"
}

So if you want to know all files, dumping them is best placed at the end of the file that is called first, e.g. your usual index.php.