Question

I had this:

final public function __construct()
{
  $this->_host = 'ssl://myserver.com';
  $this->_porto = 700;
  $this->_filePointer = false;

  try
  {
    $this->_filePointer = fsockopen($this->_host, $this->_porto);
    if ($this->_filePointer === FALSE)
    {
       throw new Exception('Cannot place filepointer on socket.');
    }
    else
    {
       return $this->_filePointer;
    }

 }

 catch(Exception $e)
 {
            echo "Connection error: " .$e->getMessage();
 }

}

But I would like to add a timeout option to this class so I’ve added:

final public function __construct()
{
  $this->_host = 'ssl://myserver.com';
  $this->_porto = 700;
  $this->_filePointer = false;
  $this->_timeout = 10;

  try
  {
    $this->_filePointer = fsockopen($this->_host, $this->_porto, '', '', $this->_timeout);
    if ($this->_filePointer === FALSE)
    {
       throw new Exception('Cannot place filepointer on socket.');
    }
    else
    {
       return $this->_filePointer;
    }

 }

 catch(Exception $e)
 {
            echo "Connection error: " .$e->getMessage();
 }

}

I’m getting an error saying: “Only variables can passed by reference.”

What’s going on?

Update:
The error: “Only variables can be passed by reference” is related to this line:

$this->_filePointer = fsockopen($this->_host, $this->_porto, '', '', $this->_timeout);

Thanks a lot,
MEM

Answer 1

fsockopen ( string $hostname [, int $port = -1 [, int &$errno [,
            string &$errstr [, float $timeout = ini_get("default_socket_timeout") ]]]] )

The &$errno and &$errstr parameters are passed by reference. You can not use an empty string '' as argument there, since this is not a variable that can be passed by reference.

Pass a variable name for these parameters, even if you’re not interested in them (which you should be, though):

fsockopen($this->_host, $this->_porto, $errno, $errstr, $this->_timeout)

Be careful to not overwrite existing variables with the same name.