How to capture HTML for a PHP variable - php

Question

I have dozens of templates elaborated by a web designer. They are primarily HTML, with a few PHP tags and data. The problem is that I need to re-use those templates (tpl.php) to send email, and the email body (through PHPMailer) is a variable. I have succeeded to fill a variable with the HTML output in the code example (adapted). My question is: should I redo all the templates or is this a valid approach?
<?php
print "This will print just the 'hello world' output. I don't need to print the function as it has no return value<br />";
hola_mundo(); // I directly call the function and it outputs HTML to the screen
print "<br />";
// Now the assignment to the variable.
ob_start(); // I silence the output to screen
hola_mundo();
$string = ob_get_contents(); // I capture the buffer
ob_end_clean(); // I restore the output to screen
print "Now I print the string variable to demonstrate it has captured the HTML ";
print $string;
function hola_mundo(){
?><font color="red"<b>HOLA MUNDO CRUEL</b></font><?php
} // function
?>
The more logical approach would be to have this function (which I do not have and should redo for dozens of templates):
<?php
$string = hola_mundo();
print $string;
function hola_mundo(){
$string = '<font color="red"<b>HOLA MUNDO CRUEL</b></font>';
return $string
} // function
?>

Answer 1

Do you mean this?
function getTemplate($file) {
ob_start();
include $file;
return ob_get_clean();
}
// Example usage:
$string = getTemplate('templates/tpl.php');
tpl.php will be executed as a PHP file.
You can even pass variables to the template:
function getTemplate($file, $variables=array()) {
extract($variables);
ob_start();
include $file;
return ob_get_clean();
}
// Example usage:
$string = getTemplate('templates/tpl.php', array('message' => 'Hello world!'));
This will extract 'Hello world' into the function scope, making it available as the $message variable to the template.