Question

I’ve got a block of PHP generated JavaScript code for WYSIWYG editor which looks like this:

<script>
code contains ', " etc.
</script>

As soon as this script appears on page, specific textarea is replaced by WYSIWYG. But I want to do this only when user asks for it. The problem is, I cannot get this JavaScript into PHP variable, because the editor’s PHP method replace() echos the javascript right away.

So I want to put this <script> into a variable so that I could call it later when user requests it. Is it possible?

One solution came to my mind – put this <script> into external HTML file and load this file via AJAX.

Answer 1

In php one can use output buffering to take any function that outputs text (and even text like this ?> TEXT <?php) and store it in a variable.

You’d do something like this:

ob_start();

replace(); // or whatever the function that generates the javascript is...

$script = ob_get_contents();

ob_end_clean();

In order to be able to call this later you could then do something like this:

$script = str_replace('<script>', '<script>function showEditor() {', $script);
$script = str_replace('</script>', '}</script>', $script);

echo $script;

This is rather hackish and could end you up in a lot of trouble later on especially if the called code changes), so I wouldn’t be the one to recommend it. It may be the easiest way to do this, though.