PHP Output Buffering Capturing the output buffer to re-use later
Example
In this example, we have an array containing some data.
We capture the output buffer in $items_li_html and use it twice in the page.
<?php
// Start capturing the output
ob_start();
$items = ['Home', 'Blog', 'FAQ', 'Contact'];
foreach($items as $item):
// Note we're about to step "out of PHP land"
?>
<li><?php echo $item ?></li>
<?php
// Back in PHP land
endforeach;
// $items_lists contains all the HTML captured by the output buffer
$items_li_html = ob_get_clean();
?>
<!-- Menu 1: We can now re-use that (multiple times if required) in our HTML. -->
<ul class="header-nav">
<?php echo $items_li_html ?>
</ul>
<!-- Menu 2 -->
<ul class="footer-nav">
<?php echo $items_li_html ?>
</ul>
Save the above code in a file output_buffer.php and run it via php output_buffer.php.
You should see the 2 list items we created above with the same list items we generated in PHP using the output buffer:
<!-- Menu 1: We can now re-use that (multiple times if required) in our HTML. -->
<ul class="header-nav">
<li>Home</li>
<li>Blog</li>
<li>FAQ</li>
<li>Contact</li>
</ul>
<!-- Menu 2 -->
<ul class="footer-nav">
<li>Home</li>
<li>Blog</li>
<li>FAQ</li>
<li>Contact</li>
</ul>
