Question

1st i have to say that i am not php professional and this is my 1st time to use return().

so here is the code.
i need to return false and the number of minutes left from the function.

if(!checkIpn())
    $err[]='you need to wait'.$nresting.'minutes before you send another request';
function checkIpn()
{
    $useripe = 0;  
 if ( isset($_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"]) )    {     $useripe = $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"] ; } 
 else if ( isset($_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"]) )    {     $useripe =  $_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"] ; } 
 else if ( isset($_SERVER["HTTP_CLIENT_IP"]) )    {     $useripe =  $_SERVER["HTTP_CLIENT_IP"] ; }


 $query  = "SELECT * FROM table WHERE ip = '$useripe' AND status = 'pending' ORDER BY id ASC"; 
 $result = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error());   
 $num_rows = mysql_num_rows($result);  

  if ( $num_rows > 0 ) 
 {  
    $str_today = date("Y-m-d H:i:s"); 
    $i=1; 
    while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) 
        { 
            $str_start = $row['date'];    
            $str_start = strtotime($str_start);  
            $str_end = strtotime($str_today);    
            $nseconds = $str_end - $str_start;   
            $nminutes = round($nseconds / 60);    
                    if ( $nminutes > 120 ) 
                            { return true; } 
                    else    { 
                            $nresting = 120 - $nminutes;
                            return false; }  
            $i++; 
        } 
 } 
 else { return true; }  

based on Tadeck answer below.i did it like this:

$result = checkIpn();
if($result[0]==false)
    $err[]='you need to wait '.$result[1].' minutes before you send another request';

thank you Tadeck.

Answer 1

If you want to return two different variables using single call, you can use something like:

return array(true, 0);

or

return array(true);

in first case (when returning success) and

return array(false, $minutes);

in second case (returning failure).

Then you can check it that way:

$result = checkIpn();

if ($result[0]) {
    echo 'Success.';
} else {
    echo 'Failure. Minutes to wait: '.$result[1];
}

I hope this helps.

EDIT:

If I understand you correctly, you return true or the number of minutes > 0 (larger than zero). Thus you can use such return in case of success:

return true;

and this in case of failure:

return $minutes;

Then you will be able to use it in the code in the following way:

$result = checkIpn();

if ($result === true) {
    echo 'Success';
} else {
    echo 'Failure. Minutes to wait: '.$result;
}

And I would like to advise you to properly document such function, so that no one is surprised when it returns integer instead of boolean 😉