Use php to read the source of a php file

Question

I'm attempting to use php to read the source of a separate php file. I'm attempting to use file_get_contents in the following manner

file_get_contents('http://www.example.com/someFile.php');

Unfortunately, the code above attempts to execute the php code rather than just reading the text as it would with any other file.

I came across an article which appears to address the issue, which led me to the following code:

file_get_contents('php://filter/convert.base64-encode/resource=http://www.example.com/someFile.php');

However this code has the same effect; It attempts to execute the php code.

How can I use php to read the source of another php file without attempting to execute the php in the file?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, the code above attempts to execute the php code rather than just reading the text as it would with any other file.

No, it doesn't.

What's happening here is that file_get_contents makes a regular HTTP request for http://www.example.com/someFile.php, and the remote server at "example.com" is interpreting the PHP code. It serves the results up exactly as though you'd navigated to http://www.example.com/someFile.php in your browser. Your script is downloading that output.

file_get_contents most definitely does not execute the contents of the file after retrieving it. The only access your script has to "someFile.php" is what the remote server is willing to serve up; file_get_contents cannot somehow fetch the underlying PHP source any more than you could with your browser somehow view the PHP source.

Answer 2

If remote server does not give you the source of the php file 'as is' you will never get it by yourself. Remote server will ALWAYS (except, of course, of situation with wrong configuration) run php engine for it and return the output of the script. Imagine what would happen if you will be able to get the source of ANY remote php file.

Answer 3

When you request a remote file, how it's rendered is up to the server on the other end. If the remote host is configured to execute a PHP file before serving it, you can expect to get the output served back.

If you own the server at the other end, you can instruct it not to parse .php files before sending them back. For Apache, you'll probably want to read up on mod_mime: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_mime.html

Answer 4

As it was said before, if you try to read the file through an http url, the request will then be processed by the webserver on that server and it will execute the php file.

If the file is on the same server as your php code, try to use a either relative or absolute filepath such as file_get_contents('/dir/dir/yourfile') or file_get_contents('dir/file.php').

Answer 5

You can't read the content of the php file using the URL, because if you are using http:// then it is processed through your apache server and the apache gives the output of php file not the content. If you could read the php file using http:// then its a security issue and you can read the content of files from other server as well. So the answer is you can't do it, as simple as that!!

By any chance if you are trying to access the php file from other server which is not owned by you, its simple illegal !!

Answer 6

In my case, i was able to read the php source of files in my server by using htmlentities: $Filedata=file_get_contents('myfile.php'); echo htmlentities($Filedata);

But this method, is not working for remote files. Maybe depends on the server configuration (when php is served) as said above.