problem w/function inside heredoc

[travelbuff]

Hi all:

I am buidling a form inside heredoc. For part of the form, I need to build a drop down menu with data pulled from another table. I thought I could accomplish this by defining a function and the executing the function inside the heredoc string, but that didn't work (actually, it caused the echo statments inside the function to go ahead and echo right where they were instead of where the function was called). Then I tried to define a variable as the output of the function and I got the same result as above. Here is the code:

//define a function to get the who can go drop down menu
   function who_options() {
   $who_querydrop = "select who_can_go_id,who_desc from who_can_go";
   $who_resultdrop = MYSQL_QUERY($who_querydrop);
   $who_numberdrop = mysql_Numrows($who_resultdrop);
     if ($who_numberdrop>0) {
	  $who_xdrop=0;
        while ($who_xdrop<$who_numberdrop) {
             $who_can_go_id = mysql_result($who_resultdrop,$who_xdrop,"who_can_go_id"); 
             $who_desc = mysql_result($who_resultdrop,$who_xdrop,"who_desc"); 
             echo "<option value=\"$who_can_go_id\">$who_desc</option>"; 
             $who_xdrop++;
        } // end while 
     } // end if 
   } //end function who options

and in the form I have tried:

<select name="who_can_go"> 
<option="">Select One
{${who_options()}}
and
{who_options()}
</select>

And of course, outside the form

$who_options= who_options();

Then just added $who options to the heredoc string.

I am lost, any help would be appreciated.

BTW - I know I can accomplish this by not putting the entire form in a variable string. but with my application, I think it is the right way to do it and it should be doable...

[swr]

The problem is that your function is doing echo directly.

Where you have "$who_options=who_options();" it's not doing what you think. The function doesn't return any value, so $who_options gets set to null, which means nothing happens later on when you echo $who_options. But the function itself does echo things directly, which means as soon as you do that who_options() call, before you've outputed anything else, you're outputing a bunch of options tags.

Instead of echoing things directly, the who_options() function should assemble a string and return it.

At the beginning of the function, put this:
$string = "";

Then where you have the echo statement, put this instead:
$string .= "<option value=\"$who_can_go_id\">$who_desc</option>";

The .= means "append the following onto the end of $string".

Then at the end of the function, before the closing }, put this:
return $string;

Then the $who_options=who_options() statement will set $who_options to what you want without echoing anything, allowing you to echo $who_options later on where you want it to appear.

[travelbuff]

swr - thanks! Not only did your solution work, it gave me a better understanding of how functions work.