Question

I’m using command line PHP to build some files offline. To capture the script output I use the standard ob_start stuff:

ob_start();
// Echo lots of stuff
$content = ob_get_contents();
// Now the $content can be written to a file

However, I also want to print some messages to the terminal (for instance, warnings) while collecting the “main output” into the buffer. Is there a way to do this? It doesn’t seem to be possible to pause the buffering for a while to print the terminal messages, and then continue the buffering from where it was left. Is there any workaround for this?

Answer 1

Just write to STDOUT or STDERR (both constants containing file pointer resources) using fputs():

ob_start();
echo 'Output buffer';
fputs(STDOUT, "Log message");
$x = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();;

echo "X = $x";