Question

Here’s the IF statement. I want to access the timeStampCleaned variable later on.

    if ($xmlRatesTime = '') {
        $timeStampCleaned = date('j F Y H:i', $ratesTimeStamp); // Convert unix timestamp into date format
    } else {
        // ...
    }

Like so:

    if(empty($ratesTimeStamp)) {

        $newXML = simplexml_load_file('cache/rates.xml');

        $child = $newXML->addChild('currency');
        $child->addAttribute('id', ''.$to.'');
        $child->addChild('title', $toTitle);
        $child->addChild('loc', $toLocation);
        $child->addChild('rate', $finalRate);
        $child->addChild('timestamp', $timeStamp);

        $dom = new DOMDocument('1.0');
        $dom->preserveWhiteSpace = false;
        $dom->formatOutput = true;
        $dom->loadXML($newXML->asXML());
        $newXMLdomCleaned = $dom->saveXML();

        file_put_contents('cache/rates.xml', $newXMLdomCleaned);
    }

But I’m getting the error:

Notice: Undefined variable: timeStampCleaned in ...file... on line 208

From what I understand, accessing variables within if statements is fine. So I have no idea why this isn’t working!?

Thanks

Answer 1

It’s probably because you are not declaring the variable in the else part of your statement. If unless $xmlRatesTime is equal to '', $timeStampCleaned will not be created. Try adding a declaration in the “else”, for example:

if ($xmlRatesTime = '') {
    $timeStampCleaned = date('j F Y H:i', $ratesTimeStamp);
} else {
    $timeStampCleaned = ''; // add this here!
}

Although, generally speaking, I find this to be bad programming practice. I would recommending declaring the variable before the if statement altogether, as in:

$timeStampCleaned = '';
if ($xmlRatesTime = '') {
    $timeStampCleaned = date('j F Y H:i', $ratesTimeStamp);
} else {
    //whatever
}

As a side note, did you mean $xmlRatesTime=='' (two equal signs)?