A PHP Function

[redrabbit]

Hello everyone,

I've had a couple of years of experience in VB, Pascal and a few months in PHP.

But im struggling with knowing when to use a php function. I've never written one yet.

My website gets its content from MySql databases, and then outputs it. I dont know if i should use a function here or not.

When - in your opinion - would you use a function. In my opinoin i would say its only necessary when the function actually outputs something to be used in the main body of the code.

Any ideas?

[The_Chancer]

I have a tendancy to try and put anything into a function - you'll never know when you will use it again....

My db connections always run through one...

<?php
global $db_user;
global $db_pass;
global $db_host;
global $db_name;
$db_user	= '******';
$db_pass	= '******';
$db_host	= '192.168.150.10';
$db_name	= 'ccs';
function do_query ( $sql ) 
{
	ini_set("SMTP", "192.168.150.5");
	$contactemail="[e-mail]";
	$subject="SQL Failure";
	$content = "There has been a critical error with the SQL statement<br />";
	$content .= "<br /><strong>".$sql."</strong><br /><br />";
	$content .= "Made by ".@$_COOKIE['ccsuser']." on ".date("d M Y H:i:s",time());
	$content .= "<br /><br />This was from page : ".$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];
	$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n"; 
	$headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n"; 
	$headers .= "From: ME<[e-mail]>\r\n"; 
	$headers .= "To: ".$contactemail."\r\n"; 
	$headers .= "Reply-To: Me<[e-mail]>\r\n"; 
	$headers .= "X-Priority: 1\r\n"; 
	$headers .= "X-MSMail-Priority: High\r\n"; 
	$headers .= "X-Mailer: Central Conference Services PHP Mailer";
	global $db_user;
	global $db_pass;
	global $db_host;
	global $db_name;
	mssql_connect( $db_host, $db_user, $db_pass )or die("Cant connect to $db_host: ");
	mssql_select_db( $db_name )or die("Cant select $db_name: ");
	@$res = mssql_query( $sql )or die("There was an error - this has been logged!".mail($contactemail, $subject, $content, $headers));
	return $res;
}

Means I can just give $query=do_query($sql); and if it works OK - if not I'll get mailed....

Simple yet very effective...

I know before my client if something goes wrong... Always good to be one step ahead...

[redrabbit]

Ahh right. Maybe ill start trying to do that.

But its still hard to know weather or not to do it. My website uses includes/header.php where i connect to the database.

Say for example, my main home page, uses this code:

mysql_query(xxx);
$row = array(query);
output $row['field'];

So its hard to know if i even need a function for this little bit of code.

[The_Chancer]

I wouldn't do one for every piece of code, but if you have a feeling that you will need to do that calculation or query over and over again, even within the same app, then a function will help on reducing code length and ultimately your time in coding..