How to pass variables from functions?

iBuddy

What I'm trying to do is pass the $title variable in the function get_title and pass it to the output.php file and use it in the <title> tags. It's not outputting anying...

index.php

<?
include('functions.php'); 
include('output.php');
HTML();
?>

functions.php

<?

function get_title(){
# variable comes from mysql query column title

# for this example, $row[title] is this:
$row[title] = "This is a test from mysql query column";

#now store that variable as the same one used for output.php for the <title> tags
$title = $row[title];


}

?>

output.php

<?
function HTML() {
	global $title;
?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title><? echo $title; ?></title>
</head>

<body>
</body>
</html>

<? } ?>

djjjozsi

<?php
function get_title()
{ 
    // create $title from MYSQL
    return $title;
} 

function HTML()
{
    $title = get_title();

/* Here you output the title*/
} 

?>

johanafm

First off, a web search for "global variables are evil" might prove insightful.

Apart from that, you are using the global keyword in the wrong place. Anything outside of a function or class is in global scope. Anything inside those is not.

So you have

function get_title() {
	$title = 'stuff';	# function get_title scope = not in global scope
}
get_title();		# defines a variable called $title in get_title's local scope.

# still no global scope variable $title

function HTML() {
	global $title;	# define the global var $title (since it didn't exist yet)

echo $title;		# this is ok
}
# no $title is in global scope
echo $title;	# this is also ok. but $title is null.

So you can drop the function HTML() alltogether, and change get_title() to

function get_title() {
	global $title;
	$title = ...;
}

echo '<title>'.$title.'</title>';	# allready are in global scope here.

iBuddy

Still confused 🙁

Basically what I'm in need of doing is passing a variable inside a function for the title.

Okay let's say I made the following changes:

index.php

<?
include('functions.php'); 
include('output.php');
?>

functions.php

<?
function get_title(){
	$title = "Example of a title";
	return $title;
}
?>

output.php

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title><? get_title(); ?></title>
</head>

<body>
blah blah blah
</body>
</html>

laserlight

This:

<title><? get_title(); ?></title>

should be:

<title><?php echo get_title(); ?></title>