I’ve recently started working on a custom module in Drupal 6 and I really disliked the idea to use built in functions for tables and/or to use embedded html into my module. So I’ve made a simple system on having a view like system in Drupal 6.

Create a new module, and in the module folder create a directory called views (for eg:). Add the following function in your module

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function get_include_contents($file, $file_data) 
{
    extract($file_data);
    if (is_file($file)) {
        ob_start();
        include $file;
        return ob_get_clean();
    }
    return false;
}

You can then use the function to include and assign variables to the view:

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function mymodule_page()
{
    $view = dirname(__FILE__) . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'views' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'mymodule_page.php';
    $view_data = array(
        'variable_name' => 'data',
    );
    $page_content = get_include_contents($view, $view_data);
}

And then you’ll be able to just use the variable in your view

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<?php echo $variable_name; ?>