Question

I need help in understanding the right way to pass an object (MySQL connection) created in one method to another method within the same class.

I am trying to create a database class that loads the connection using a constructor and all other methods, use this connection to perform their respective functions.

While trying to do so I keep getting this error:

Fatal error: Call to a member function query() on a non-object in /database.php on line 44

My code:

class database
{ 
    public $mysqli;

    public function __construct($database_server, $database_name, $database_user, $database_pass)
    {
        $mysqli = new mysqli($database_server,$database_user, $database_pass, $database_name);

        if ($mysqli->connect_error)
        {
                  die('Connect Error (' . $mysqli->connect_errno . ') '. $mysqli->connect_error);
        }
        echo "Database connection established successfully.<br>";
        return $this->mysqli;

    }

    public function fetch_data()
    {

        $query = "select * from payment";
        if ($result = $this->mysqli->query($query))
        {

            // fetch associative array
            while ($row = $result->fetch_assoc())
            {
                printf ("%s (%s)\n", $row["id"], $row["status"]);
            }

        }

    }
}

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you everyone.

Answer 1

public function __construct($database_server, $database_name, $database_user, $database_pass)
{
    $mysqli = new mysqli($database_server,$database_user, $database_pass, $database_name);

    if ($mysqli->connect_error)
    {
              die('Connect Error (' . $mysqli->connect_errno . ') '. $mysqli->connect_error);
    }
    echo "Database connection established successfully.<br>";

    // instead of return, just set the local variable to the `mysqli` property.
    $this->mysqli = $mysqli;

}

Or

public function __construct($database_server, $database_name, $database_user, $database_pass)
{
    $this->mysqli = new mysqli($database_server,$database_user, $database_pass, $database_name);

    if ($this->mysqli->connect_error)
    {
       die('Connect Error (' . $this^>mysqli->connect_errno . ') '. $this->mysqli->connect_error);
    }
    echo "Database connection established successfully.<br>";    
}

And public $mysqli; will be better to be protected.