Question

I am new to PHP scripting and come from Java background. Here is a trivial thing which has turned into a brainteaser for me as of now. So here is the problem, I assigned a variable some value and when try to use that value inside if/else statement that variable actually doesn’t posses the previous assigned value to it. Here is the code:-

<?php
    session_start();

    $email = $_POST["Email"];   
    $password = $_POST["Password"];

    $db_username="root";
    $db_password="root";
    $database="mydb";
    $localhost = "mysql";

    $con = mysql_connect($localhost,$db_username,$db_password);
    mysql_select_db($database,$con) or die( "Unable to select database");

    $query = "select * from photobook.users where email ='$email' and password ='$password';" ;

    $result = mysql_query($query);

    $num=mysql_num_rows($result);

    if($num == 1){
        while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
             {
                $_SESSION['email'] = $row['email'];

                $_SESSION['username'] = $row['username'];   
             }

        header("location: home.php");

    }

    else{

        include "photoBookProtocol.php";

                print "<br>email value after photobookprotocol file include is $email";
                print "<br>password value after photobookprotocol file include is $password";

        $obj=new Protocol();

        $var = $obj->loginCheck($email,$password);

                print "value of var received is $var";

        if($var == 0){
            session_destroy();
                        print "<br>user does not exist";
            //header("location: login.php");
        }
        else{
            $_SESSION['email'] = $var[0];
            $_SESSION['username'] = $var[1];
            print "<br>user exists";
            header("location: home.php");

        }   
    }

    mysql_close($con);
?>

So when I pass the $email and $password in loginCheck($email, $password) inside “else” clause there is nothing passed. Any idea why this is happening?

Answer 1

There is nothing wrong with your variable scope, so either:

• There is nothing in the POST data
• The include overwrites the two variables
• loginCheck() is receiving the correct variables but there is a bug within the function

As a side note, since your script depends on POST data, you should have a condition to check if the required data is present before proceeding:

if(isset($_POST['Email'], $_POST['Password']))
{
    // something posted
}