Question

I’ve been wanting to do this because my site does about 3 HTTP requests per page load, because each PHP’s output is retrieved with cURL. This is too slow, and I want to avoid using cURL. I found this question on Stack Overflow, and it basically does what I want. The accepted answer’s suggestion is to use ob_start(); to start getting output then use ob_get_clean(); to put the output into a variable. My issue now is that the PHP scripts I’m trying to capture output from need variables passed to them using HTTP Get. The access those variables like this:

$term = $_GET['term'];

And I don’t want to change that, because although I’m going to access these PHP scripts’ outputs from another PHP script, I’m also planning on accessing them from elsewhere. So, is there a way to fool these PHP scripts into accepting some arguments through Get, then capturing their outputs with the method suggested above?

Answer 1

And I don’t want to change that, because although I’m going to access these PHP scripts’ outputs from another PHP script, I’m also planning on accessing them from elsewhere. So, is there a way to fool these PHP scripts into accepting some arguments through Get, then capturing their outputs with the method suggested above?

Your question is a bit unclear as to why you’re using cURL in the first place. If your scripts are on the same server, you can simply set the correct $_GET variables and use:

<?php
ob_start( );
// include the file.
$_GET['foo'] = 'bar';
include 'the_file.php';

$output = ob_get_clean( );

If your scripts are located on another server, where include is not viable, you will always have to do a HTTP request to get their contents, regardless of whether your this with cURL or Ajax, or sockets for all I care.