CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpfunctionpointers
Ricardo Neves
Ricardo Neves

Reputation: 515

Using php pointers on function?

I'm creating a website and somewhere in the code I need to query for a user attribute (ex:account state) and in the same row I have the reason, case is account state is "suspended".

I'm trying to minimize the requests to the database, so I created a function to verify account state.

function getAccountState($userid,$reason){}

What I am trying to do is if account state is "suspended" I would change the $reason to "the database reason".

I've already done that but if I change the $reason inside the function, outside the function it will not change. I searched for "php pointers" on google but I think there is not such thing.

Is there a way to do this? Other way I'll just make another database request...

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1143

Answers (4)

Fabien
Fabien

Reputation: 13406

You are looking for references, in PHP terminology, not pointers.

They work this way :

function getAccountState($userid, &$reason){  // Notice the &
    $reason = "database locked";  // Use it as a regular variable
}


getAccountState(12345, $reason);  // Here, it is written as a regular variable, but it is a ref.
echo $reason;   // echoes "database locked"

Upvotes: 0

Karisters
Karisters

Reputation: 186

In the definition of functions you can tell that $reason argument is passed by reference, not value. To do so, use & in front of variable:

function getAccountState($userid,& $reason){}

Upvotes: 0

juco
juco

Reputation: 6342

You could consider passing it in by reference. Or perhaps just changing the function to return the correct information.

Upvotes: 0

jeroen
jeroen

Reputation: 91734

You could of course pass the variable by reference but as you don't seem to need it, I would just return it from the function:

function getAccountState($userid){
  // your code
  return $reason;
}

and call it like:

$reason = getAccountState($userid);

If you want to stay your code as it is now, you could pass the variable by reference:

function getAccountState($userid,&$reason){}
                                 ^ like so

Upvotes: 2

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