Question

Let’s assume we have the following structure:

index.php
config.inc.php
\ lib
\ lib \ common.php

Several parameters like database name, user & co are configured in config.inc.php. What is the proper way to access them i.e. from a function located in \lib\common.php. Do I really have to do an include_once("config.inc.php") within each function there?

It doesn’t seem to work if:

• config.inc.php is included once once in index.php, before including \lib\common.php there
• if config.inc.php defines all variables before including \lib\common.php and all other files (this way I would only have to include config.inc.php in all “central” files at the level of index.php
• neither does it work if config.inc.php is included at the top of \lib\common.php

Many thanks – I wasn’t able to find a solution with Google!

Solution

I included config.inc.php once in index.php (as suggested by Galen) and used global (as suggested by David). Everything is working as I would expect it, many thanks!

Later on I will definitely look into auto_prepend as suggested by n3rd, tkx for that as well!

Answer 1

You have to use the global keyword to access variables which were defined outside of a function:

$var1 = "muh";
$var2 = "foo";

function test() {
    global $var1;
    echo "var1=$var1; var2=$var2\n";
}

will print "var1=muh; var2=".