Question

I am writing a script to access a specific detail about the user and I was hoping to make the database query be function.

function connectUser($ip) {
   $q = "SELECT * FROM users where ID='$ID'";
   $s = mysql_query($q);
   $r = mysql_fetch_array($s);
}

But when I try and use it it will not access the row the way I want it to.

$user = '999';
connectUser($user)
echo $r['name'];

But if I put echo $r[‘name’]; in the function it will work.

Answer 1

That’s because the variable $r isn’t being returned by the function, so it’s never being set outside of the function. Here’s what you should have:

function connectUser($ip) {
   $q = "SELECT * FROM users where ID='$ip'";
   $s = mysql_query($q);
   return mysql_fetch_array($s);
}

And then outside have:

$user = '999';
$r = connectUser($user)
echo $r['name'];

You might also want to take a look at this question: prepared statements – are they necessary