How to Include PHP Files From Another Server?

Including PHP Files from Another Server

Consider a scenario where you have two PHP files on separate servers. You need to include the second file from the first.

// main.php (http://www.mysite.com/main.php)
include "http://www.sample.com/includeThis.php";
echo $foo;

// includeThis.php (http://www.sample.com/includeThis.php)
<?php
$foo = "this is data from file one";

However, you encounter a problem when attempting to include the remote file.

Understanding the Restrictions

By default, PHP's configuration prohibits including files from remote servers. This restriction is imposed for security reasons. To include remote files, you need to enable the allow_url_include directive in php.ini. However, this is generally disabled and considered a bad practice due to potential security risks.

Alternative Solution: file_get_contents()

If you need to obtain data from a remote file without executing PHP code, you can use the file_get_contents() function. It returns the contents of the remote file as plain text.

To use this method, modify the remote script to generate the necessary data in a format that the local script can process (e.g., JSON). Then, in the local script:

$remoteData = file_get_contents("http://www.sample.com/includeThis.php");
$data = json_decode($remoteData);

This solution allows you to retrieve data from the remote file without compromising security.

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