Returning Views Output As A Variable

There are times when you may wish to have the contents of a view file made available as a PHP variable - more specifically a string, instead of being immediately sent to the viewport. We can do this by simply adding , true onto the end of our 'view' command. For example:

function _get_information() { 
    //create an array of cities 
    $cities[] = 'New York'; 
    $cities[] = 'London'; 
    $cities[] = 'Paris'; 
    //add 'cities' onto data array​
    $data['cities'] = $cities; 

    //add 'today' onto data array
    $data['today'] = 'Monday'; 

    //return the view contents as a string​
    $html = $this->view('information', $data, true);
    return $html;
}

The idea of calling a view file but not displaying the view file on the screen may seem a little unusual - and it is!  However, occasionally, developers have a need to capture the contents that have been generated from a view file - without sending those contents to the browser.  One example of such a scenario would be if you were building a feature for caching web pages.

There are three steps required to make your view file contents available as a normal PHP variable:

STEP 1: Add a variable plus an equals symbol before calling the view method.  For example:

$output = $this->view('greeting', $data...

STEP 2: Pass the boolean of true into your view as the third argument.  For example:

$output = $this->view('greeting', $data, true);

STEP 3: Finally, end your method by returning the variable that you have now created.  For example:

return $output;

$code = $this->view('file', [], true);

$info = $this->_get_information();
//now do something with the info!