Question

I’m writing a function that will return database results.

I need it to return the data if the function is called from another function and echo the data when its called via AJAX.

Possible Solutions

• Pass in a parameter…if($echo) echo $data; else return $data;
• Separate functions…function employees_ajax() { echo $this->employees(); }

I’d prefer something smarter that can detect that ‘itself’ was called from another function and return instead of echo.

UPDATE

Another possibility would be to check the $_SERVER variable.

“As far as I know, the X-Requested-With is sent by the Ajax functions of most major Frameworks but not all…it’s safe to say it’s not generally a 100% reliable method to determine whether a request is an AJAX request or not.”

Does $_SERVER['HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH'] exist in PHP or not?

It would be fail-safe to rely on the server rather than the client / js framework.

UPDATE 2: RESULT

function employees($id = NULL, $return = FALSE) {

    .
    .
    .
    if($return === TRUE) return json_encode($data);
    else echo json_encode($data);
}

Answer 1

Try giving your employees function an optional flag:

function employees ($shouldEchoResult = true) {

  if ($shouldEchoResult) {
    echo $result;
  }
  else {
    return $result;
  }

}

If it’s called with AJAX, don’t set the flag. Otherwise, in your code, use categories(false). That’s the only other solution I can think of. PHP doesn’t have anything built in for that like Ruby does.