The require() statement replaces itself with the specified file, much like the C preprocessor's #include works.
If "URL fopen wrappers" are enabled in PHP (which they are in the default configuration), you can specify the file to be require()ed using an URL instead of a local pathname. See Remote files and fopen() for more information.
An important note about how this works is that when a file is include()ed or require()ed, parsing drops out of PHP mode and into HTML mode at the beginning of the target file, and resumes PHP mode again at the end. For this reason, any code inside the target file which should be executed as PHP code must be enclosed within valid PHP start and end tags.
require() is not actually a function in PHP; rather, it is a language construct. It is subject to some different rules than functions are. For instance, require() is not subject to any containing control structures. For another, it does not return any value; attempting to read a return value from a require() call results in a parse error.
Unlike include(), require() will always read in the target file, even if the line it's on never executes. If you want to conditionally include a file, use include(). The conditional statement won't affect the require(). However, if the line on which the require() occurs is not executed, neither will any of the code in the target file be executed.
Similarly, looping structures do not affect the behaviour of require(). Although the code contained in the target file is still subject to the loop, the