Return closures (lambda expressions) in your extension files as follows:
return function(){
echo '<li><a href="./whatever">Header Link</a></li>';
}
In PHP the include/require statement is really a function and therefore has a return value, hence you can collect those closures into an array:
$closures = array();
for($x=0;$x<count($extension_files);$x++){
$closures[$i]=include($extension_files[$x]);
}
// Do whatever you want with your closures, e.g. execute them:
foreach($closures as $closure) {
$closure();
}
ADDED CONTENT:
In the case if you would like to return multiple closures with each include, you may return an array of closures, indexed by the name of them:
return array(
'echoCustomHeaders' => function() {
echo '<li><a href="./whatever">Header Link</a></li>';
},
// ...
);
Then you can still execute some of them by their name:
$closureArray = array();
foreach($extension_files as $file) {
$closureArray[] = include($file);
}
foreach($closureArray as $closure) {
if(isset($closure['echoCustomHeaders'])) // Maybe there wasn't an echoCustomHeaders in each extension file ...
$closure['echoCustomHeaders']();
}
Maybe it would be a better idea to even separate the different kind of extension functions into distinct arrays:
$closureArray = array();
foreach($extension_files as $file) {
$functions = include($file);
foreach($functions as $name => $function) {
if(!isset($closureArray[$name]))
$closureArray[$name] = array();
$closureArray[$name][] = $function;
}
}
foreach($closureArray['echoCustomHeaders'] as $closure) {
$closure();
}
Another solution is to use a more object oriented way, and declare a new extension class in each extension file. However, if there would be no data sharing required between the extension methods in an extension file, then simply returning the functions as an array of closures is a more lightweight and cleaner solution in my opinion.