class DepartmentTree {
function &buildTree($id) {
static $html;
if (!isset($html)) {
// DO STUFF HERE TO $html
}
// DO MORE STUFF
if ($condition_is_met) $this->buildTree($newID);
$this->html = $html;
}
}
The above (and greatly paraphrased from the 100-line actual class) class and method, in its real form, totally works inasmuch as it successfully always creates an HTML hierarchial tree of departments mapped with child departments. I have no problem with this.. as long as I only use the class once.
However, there is a case where I need the entire contents of the departments table dumped out into a resultset, and to do that I figured I would just loop through a query of records that have no parent ID; each id in each row I seed into $tree->buildTree():
for ($i = 0; $i < @sizeof($result); $i++) {
$tree->buildTree($result[$i]->id);
$this->deptArray += $tree->convert_to_array();
$tree->clearTreeHTML();
}
The "convert_to_array()" method will convert the contents of $this->html from HTML content to an array, keeping the original hierarchial order; the "clearTreeHTML()" method will set $this->html to NULL or "".
Problem is, it does not do that, because apparently "static $html" keeps an instance of it running in the single-referenced instance of "buildTree" method.
Based on how best I can explain my problem, and sorry I can't explain it any better w/o dumping the actual code line by line, how have you all figured out the best way to generate multiple, unique instances from a single-referenced method that uses a static local variable?
Thanx
Phil
