Using functions and variables

Hexxx

I have a variable which contains data that would be accessed by different parts (fucntions) of my program. The problem is from what I read and tried with PHP, a function can only access variables that are within the function, or passed as an argument. This is making my function names very long as all the function are having these shared variables in their parameters.

	$sharedVariable = 'hello';


function myfunc ()
{
	echo ( "This is the shared variable: " . $sharedVariable );
}

myfunc();

When I do this, I don't see the word 'hello' coming up. Instead I have to end up doing this :

	$sharedVariable = 'hello';


function myfunc ($sharedVar)
{
	echo ( "This is the shared variable: " . $sharedVar );
}

myfunc($sharedVariable );

Is there any (safe, and secure) way to get the first one to work with out have all my functions having the same arugment being passed?

leatherback

Depends a little on what data your variables contain.

If they are website configs you should store them in constants, which are global, I think.

ALternatively you could store them in session variables, which is a pain, as your session becomes big

Thirdly you could use the global keyword:

function myspace()
  {
  global $var1, $var2;
  echo $var1;
  }

ahundiak

lookup the global keyword in the manual.

$sharedVariable = 'hello';

function myfunc ()
{
    global $sharedVariable;
    echo ( "This is the shared variable: " . $sharedVariable );
}

myfunc();

Make sure you have register_globals set to off for security.

Hexxx

The variables are arrays which are used to store calculated values in preparation for inserting into a data warehouse. They wouldn't be used on a webpage as they are basically an intermediate store in moving the data from a database to the data warehouse, so I wouldn't use sessions for that.

I thought using global before a variable meant it could be accessed anywhere inside the code later on ... I didn't know I could use global inside a function itself to get data that was declared outside. I'll read up on register_globals and see.

Thanks.

NogDog

$GLOBALS['sharedVariable'] = 'hello';

function myfunc ()
{
   echo ( "This is the shared variable: " . $GLOBALS['sharedVariable'] );
}

myfunc();