Question

I want to make a kind of “generic” function which gets executed and – depending on what to do – includes it’s implementation file via include(). So for example, I might have exactly one function and exactly 20 procedure files for that function. The procedure files may look like do_this_procedure.php, do_that_procedure.php, etc.

As I’m new to PHP I’d like to know from PHP expertes wether this is fine with PHP or not, before I try it and only “believe” it works, and in reality a lot of things go wrong. So what do you think? Currently I think of an include just as an insertion of code right into that place before it gets compiled for execution.

Answer 1

From the include statement documentation:

If the include occurs inside a function within the calling file, then all of the code contained in the called file will behave as though it had been defined inside that function. So, it will follow the variable scope of that function. An exception to this rule are magic constants which are evaluated by the parser before the include occurs.

So yes, you can call include from within a function and use that to define the body of the function. You can even have the file that you include vary with each call to the function. The downside is the include will be evaluated with each call to the function; if the function is called many times, it could seriously impact performance.

Depending on exactly what you’re trying to accomplish, an alternative is to follow a functional programming paradigm, which lets you construct functions at runtime. Before PHP 5.3, it’s ugly, so I wouldn’t recommend it unless you can require at least PHP 5.3.