AvengeX Webmaster Development - Free PHP, MySQL, CSS, XHTML, Photoshop Tutorials

Output buffering is probably the best thing after the fifty things that come after sliced bread - ever been in a position where you have to keep everything on one page/can't be bothered to make a new page for your "at the top of the page only" code? Don't know what I'm on about? Didn't think so.

At-the-top-of-the-page-only PHP functions are:
header()
setcookie()
session_start()

And a few others that I can't be bothered to think of. This basically means they can NORMALLY only be called before any HTML output is sent to the browser.

Why this is isn't the point - how to bypass it is the aim of this tutorial.

If you're a code reader or a tutorial goer reading harder tutorials that have a lot of things going on in the code at one time, you might see the functions called ob_start(), and ob_end_flush().

What do they do then?
This pair of functions create an output buffer that isn't anything to do with the browser - YET. Think of it like this:


Remember, when you've
inished sending the buffer you MUST use ob_end_flush() to clear the buffer, otherwise your /tmp directory might get b0rked.. AND WE DON'T WANT THAT DO WE DIDDUMS LOL ROFL LMAO OMG GTFO WTF?

Thanks!

Will

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