Question

Here’s my scenario:

$foo = bar;

one()
{
   two()
   {
      three()
      {
         // need access to $foo here
      }
   }
}

I know I could pass $foo down all three functions, but that isn’t really ideal, because you may or may not require it, besides, there are other parameters already and I don’t want to add to that list if I can prevent it. It’s only when you get to three() do you need $foo. I know I could also specify global $foo; in three(), but I read that this wasn’t a good practice.

Is there another way $foo can be made available to three() without doing either of those?

To provide a little more info, $foo in this case is info on how to connect to the database e.g. server, user, pass, but only in three() does it actually need that info. Of course I could connect to the database right as the document loads, but that feels unecessary if the document might not need it.

Any ideas?

UPDATE: I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to have “function” at the beginning of each function implying that I was created them in a nested way.

Answer 1

Using global is not a bad practice if used properly. This case you would use global and it will be totally fine.

Since global makes functions get access to global variables, there are data corruption risks.
Just make sure to use with caution and you know what you’re doing (i.e. not accidentally change the data that you don’t want it to change. This sometimes causes some nasty bugs that’s hard to track.)

Summarize: global in this case is perfectly fine.

What’s really bad is nested functions, at least in PHP.