PHP macro / inline functions (to avoid variables to go out of scope)

Question

Hello! I have the following dilemma. I have a complex CMS, and this CMS is to be themed by a graphic designer. The templates are plain HTML, with several nested inclusions. I'd like to make it easier for the designer to locate the file to be modified, by looking at the HTML of the page.

What I thought in the first place was to build something stupid like this:

function customInclude($what) { 
  print("<!-- Including $what -->");
  include($what);
  print("<!-- End of $what -->");
}

but, guess what? Variables obviously come out of scope in the included file :-) I can't declare them as global or as parameters, as I don't know how they are called and how many are there.

Is there any possibility to implement some kind of "macro expansion" in PHP? An alternative way to call it: I'd like to modify each call of the modify function, in an aspect-oriented style.

I have thought about eval(), is it the only way? Will it have a big impact on performance?

Answer 1

You should definitely use objects, namespaces and MVC model. Otherwise there is no pure and clean solution to your problem. And please, don't use eval, it's evil.

Answer 2

Not sure if I entirely understand the question, but if you're just trying to make life easier for the designer by showing them the underlying filename of the included file, then you can probably just use this within the template files:

echo '<!-- Start of '.__FILE__.' -->';
....content... 
echo '<!-- End of '.__FILE__.' -->';

__FILE__ is just one of several Magic Constants.

Also there's the get_included_files() function that returns an array of all the included files, which might be of use (you could output a list of all the included files with 'tpl' in their name for example).