Shortcode return is printing a 1 afterward

Question

function build_total_search_method( $atts ) {

    $shorcode_php_function = include( dirname(__FILE__) . "/includes/total_search.php" );

    return $shorcode_php_function;

}
add_shortcode( 'total_search', 'build_total_search_method' );

I've created a shortcode that returns an included PHP file instead of a string ... however, after the returned statement, there is a 1 printed.

Two questions:

1) What is the `1` all about and how do I remove it?

2) Am I doing this properly?

Answer 1

You are returning the result of calling include. You want to grab the output of the included file and return than instead. Use output buffering to do that.

function build_total_search_method( $atts ) {

    ob_start();
    include( dirname(__FILE__) . "/includes/total_search.php" );
    $shorcode_php_function = ob_get_clean();

    return $shorcode_php_function;

}
add_shortcode( 'total_search', 'build_total_search_method' );

Answer 2

you're getting the 1 from your include, meaning your include succeeded. if you want to assign the value to a variable, your included file can only return data. example, in total_search.php:

<?php
$some_var = 'Some content';
return $some_var;

Answer 3

include() (and the usually-safer include_once()) return whether they succeeded or not. You're seeing a 1 because that is the successful return value. Incidentally, it returns FALSE, not 0 on failure (no idea why).

To do what you are trying to achieve, @webaware's solution will work, but a less round-about (and more efficient solution for what it looks like you are trying to do would be to use file_get_contents() like so:

function build_total_search_method( $atts ) {
    return file_get_contents( dirname(__FILE__) . "/includes/total_search.php" );
}
add_shortcode( 'total_search', 'build_total_search_method' );

Note that I also stripped out the extra variable since it was never used and I think it becomes less readable with that extra line.