Question

I’d like to define a global object variable that I could use in several of the functions in my controller, Items.

Here’s my code that doesn’t work:

class Items extends CI_Controller {

 private $varname;

 function Items(){
  parent::__construct();
    $this->load->model('items_model');
    $folder_id=416;
    $this->varname=$this->items_model->getFilesById($folder_id);
 }

 function index(){
   var_dump($this->varname);    
 }

}

So $this->varname doesn’t work as evidenced when I go to the url: localhost/items/index the printed ouput is this:

array(0) { }

Answer 1

Depending on your version of PHP, the constructor may not be called. Try changing

function Items(){

to

function __construct(){

and see if that fixes the problem.

http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.decon.php As of PHP 5.3.3, methods with the same name as the last element of a namespaced class name will no longer be treated as constructor. This change doesn’t affect non-namespaced classes.

That may be what is causing your problem.