Extending PHPs echo?

Question

Is it possible to extend the PHP echo so that I can run some extra processing code on every string being displayed? I need a way to sanitize all outputs and don't want to have to call strip_tags on every display manually.

There is a lot of code that uses echo in many, many parts of the code, and I don't want to have to go and manually change them. — chustar, Mar 05 '11 at 15:57
Might be a duplicate of this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2182743/can-i-override-the-php-built-in-function-echo — Sergey, Mar 05 '11 at 16:01
echo is a language construct, it's not a function, so it can't be extended — Marc B, Mar 05 '11 at 16:04

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 05 '11 at 15:58

5

You cannot change the behaviour of echo but you could make use php's output buffering functions (see the callbacks). However, this seems like overkill. As casablance suggested: create a function.

answered Mar 05 '11 at 15:58

middus

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 05 '11 at 15:56

2

chustar,

write your own class with static methods and put it in app/libs.

Edit0: You are a programmer, write the code that changes the code.

answered Mar 05 '11 at 15:56

benjamin

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clu3 · Answer 3 · 2011-03-07T23:28:26.167

@chutstar, If you're on Linux, you can use sed to find and replace all 'echo' with 'strip_echo' in the .php files in a directory, recursively.

Below is how Zend framework replaced all 'require_once' with '//require_once', EXCEPT for 'require_once' that appears in file Loader/Autoloader.php or Application.pp

#!/bin/sh
#  cd path/to/ZendFramework/library
# replace all 'require_once' with '//require_once' , and skip Autoloader.php & Application.php
 find . -name '*.php' -not -wholename '*/Loader/Autoloader.php' -not -wholename '*/Application.php' -print0 | xargs -0 sed --regexp-extended --in-place 's/(require_once)/\/\/ \1/g'

So YOUR script should be

#!/bin/sh
# replace all 'echo' with 'strip_echo'
#  cd path/to/ZendFramework/library
 find . -name '*.php' -print0 | xargs -0 sed --regexp-extended --in-place 's/echo/strip_echo/g'

I tested and it works. There might be unexpected replaces that you should check though, for example when 'echo' is accidentally part of some other function names or variables, etc..

Extending PHPs echo?

3 Answers3