Question

I am trying to write a function that connects to a database and returns some data to display, I have:

function viewer ($view_type){  
    if ($view_type=1){
        $query="SELECT * FROM table WHERE the_id='1234'";
        $run= mysqli_query($dbc, $query) or die....;

Which is called in:

include('/../includes/connect.php');
$view= 1;
viewer($view);

This is where I get the undefined variable dbc error. The $dbc variable is defined in connect.php which is called in the include(). I realise that the function cannot call the include() variable.

I have done some research and have found that I can call it as a global variable. However I am cautious of this as the dbc variable contains sensitive DB information:

$dbc=mysqli_connect(DB_HOST, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, DB_NAME);

I have also tried adding the include to the function itself however as I need to connect to the DB on the page before calling the function i recieve ‘variable DB_HOST already defined’ errors.
Would it be appropriate to define $dbc as a global variable? If not how can I get around this?

Answer 1

I think it’s okay:

function viewer ($view_type){  
    GLOBAL $dbc; // here is your database connection
    if ($view_type=1){
        $query="SELECT * FROM table WHERE the_id='1234'";
        $run= mysqli_query($dbc, $query) or die....;