Inserting output into page after document has been executed

Question

In PHP have a situation where I need the page to be mostly executed, but have an item inserted into the output from that page.

I think output buffering may be of some help, but I can't work out how to implement it in my situation.

My code looks like this:

//this document is part of a global functions file

function pageHeader (){

    //I'm using $GLOBALS here because it works, however I would really rather a better method if possible
    $GLOBALS['error_handler'] = new ErrorHandler(); //ErrorHandler class sets a function for set_error_handler, which gets an array of errors from the executed page

    require_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/sales/global/_header.php');

    //I would like the unordered list from ->displayErrorNotice() to be displayed here, but if I do that the list is empty because the list was output before the rest of the document was executed
}

function pageFooter (){

    $GLOBALS['error_handler'] ->displayErrorNotice(); //this function displays the errors as an html unordered list

    include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/sales/global/_footer.php");
}

Most pages on the site include this document and use the pageHeader() and pageFooter() functions. What I am trying to achieve is to put an unordered list of the PHP generated errors into an HTML list just at a point after _header.php has been included. I can get the list to work as intended if I put it in the footer (after the document has been executed), but I don't want it there. I guess I could move it with JS, but I think there must be a PHP solution.

UPDATE

I'm wondering whether a callback function for ob_start() which searches the buffer by regex where to put the error list, and then inserts it will be the solution.

UPDATE 2 I have solved the problem, my answer is below. I will accept it in 2 days when I am allowed.

Answer 1

Worked it out finally. The key was to buffer the output, and search the buffer for a given snippet of html, and replace it with the unordered list.

My implementation is like this:

function outputBufferCallback($buffer){

    return str_replace("<insert_errors>", $GLOBALS['error_handler']->returnErrorNotice(), $buffer);
}

function pageHeader (){

    ob_start('outputBufferCallback');
    //I'm using $GLOBALS here because it works, however I would really rather a better method if possible
    $GLOBALS['error_handler'] = new ErrorHandler(); //ErrorHandler class sets a function for set_error_handler, which gets an array of errors from the executed page

    require_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/sales/global/_header.php');

    echo '<insert_errors>'; //this snippet is replaced by the ul at buffer flush
}

function pageFooter (){

    include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/sales/global/_footer.php");
    ob_end_flush();
}

Answer 2

If I'm getting this right, you're trying to insert some calculated code/errors between the header and footer. I'm guessing that the errors are being totalled/summed up at the very end of the page and would be completed after the page footer.

If this is true, I can't think of anyway to do this with pure php. It can only run through a page once, and cannot double back. What you can do is create an element after the footer and move it using javascript to the area where you want to display it. This would be the easiest way I would think. You can do this easily with jquery.

I can explain further if I am on the right track, but I'm not 100% sure what you're asking yet...

The jquery command you would use is .appendTo().