function get_include_contents($filename) {

	    if (is_file($filename)) {
	        ob_start();
	        include $filename;
	        $contents = ob_get_contents();
	        ob_end_clean();
	        return $contents;
	    }
	    return false;
	}

I have edited my post to answer dave’s comment below.

By looking at this funciton you may think it’s just a substitute of file_get_contents().
The difference is that file_get_contents will return literaly the contents of the file, as opposed to get_include_contents that will actually run the code,
and because we are turning on output buffering, we can get the output of the script and store it in a string. For example if we have the php file ‘example.php’:

	echo 'The gamma laser toxic spill gave me powers';

file_get_contents will produce the following result:

	$string = file_get_contents('example.php');

	echo $string;
	// will output: echo 'The gamma laser toxic spill gave me powers';

If we use get_include_contents() instead, it will produce the following result:

	$string = get_include_contents('example.php');

	echo $string;
	// will output: The gamma laser toxic spill gave me powers

If you are still thinking why would I want to do this, I will give you a real life example to ilustrate:

Lets assume that you have the following email template in a file template.php:

echo  'Dear Mr. ' . $params['name'] . ',';
echo  'All your ' . $params['item'] . ' are belong to us!';

The function could then be extended to accept some paramaters that the template will need to have on scope:

	function get_include_contents($filename, $params) {

	    if (is_file($filename)) {
	        ob_start();
	        include $filename;
	        $contents = ob_get_contents();
	        ob_end_clean();
	        return $contents;
	    }
	    return false;
	}

After that we can send an email using template.php like this:

	$html_email = get_include_contents(
							   'example.php'
							   array(
								   'name'  =>; 'Satan',
							           'item'  => 'Snakes'
								  )
							);

	mail('someemail@blah.com', 'Subject', $html_email);	

The recipient of the email will have a message in his inbox saying:

Dear Mr. Satan,
All your snakes are belong to us!

How to tranform the 6/9 fluidgrid system from newgoldleaf into an 18 columns one… ?
not a big deal,
but it’s always easier to find something to copy and paste, isn’t it?

1) download fluidgrid system from newgoldleaf
2) add these lines of code into fluid.gs.css
3) enjoy!

div.eighteen_column.section div.one {width:5%;}
div.eighteen_column.section div.two {width:10%;}
div.eighteen_column.section div.three {width:15%;}
div.eighteen_column.section div.four {width:20%;}
div.eighteen_column.section div.five {width:25%;}
div.eighteen_column.section div.six {width:30%;}
div.eighteen_column.section div.seven {width:35%;}
div.eighteen_column.section div.eight {width:40%;}
div.eighteen_column.section div.nine {width:45%;}
div.eighteen_column.section div.ten {width:50%;}
div.eighteen_column.section div.eleven {width:55%;}
div.eighteen_column.section div.twelve {width:60%;}
div.eighteen_column.section div.thirteen {width:65%;}
div.eighteen_column.section div.fourteen {width:70%;}
div.eighteen_column.section div.fifteen {width:75%;}
div.eighteen_column.section div.sixteen {width:80%;}
div.eighteen_column.section div.seventeen {width:85%;}
div.eighteen_column.section div.eighteen {width:90%;}

pear config-set http_proxy http://username:password@proxyhost:port

    public static function slugify($text) {
		$text = trim($text);
		$text = str_replace(".", "", $text);
		$text = self::removeAccents($text);
		// replace non letter or digits by -
		$text = preg_replace('~[^\\pL\d]+~u', '-', $text);
		// trim
		$text = trim($text, '-');
		// lowercase
		$text = strtolower($text);
		// remove unwanted characters
		$text = preg_replace('~[^-\w]+~', '', $text);
		return $text;

	}

	public static function removeAccents($text) {
		$text = htmlentities(utf8_decode($text));
		$remove = array("&", "acute", "grave", "circ", "tilde", "uml");
		$text = str_replace($remove, "", $text);
		return $text;
	}

Put it inside an Utils class, and use it like

$slug = Utils::slugify("nothingisclear is awesome");

Anyway today i was into slugs and i surprisingly found a php simple-and-working static method for converting strings into slugs and i felt like sharing it:

/**
 * PHP "iconv" REQUIRED !!!
 * @param object $string
 * @param object $space [optional]
 * @return
 */

public static function convertStringIntoSlug($string,$space="-") {  

	if (function_exists('iconv')) {
        $string = @iconv('UTF-8', 'ASCII//TRANSLIT', $string);
    }  

    $string = strtolower(preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9 -]/","", $string));
    $string = str_replace(" ", $space, $string);

    return $string;

}

here i’ve already wrote about a good jquery alternative (written by Leo Caseiro) for doing this

Needs couple of adjustments here and there….
if you’ve spotted a better one, please, let me know.

name of the plugin: jquery.stringToSlug.js (written by Leo Caseiro)