Template in DB?

Hey guys,

Has anybody put a php template file in database? As part of a current project I would like to put a mostly html template file in the db, and then call it and fill it with preset variables. This is pretty easy to do with include(). When I echo out the template from the db, it just echos it and doesn't parse for variables to fill, regardless if I do it the short way $stories or the long way .

Any thoughts?

Oh, and I am looking at Smarty, but didn't want to use it on this quick project.