Question

We have a function like this:

function getthis($x){
    $dbc = getDBCon();

    if ($dbc) {
        $sql = "SELECT * FROM `names`";
        $res = mysqli_query($dbc, $sql);

        while($data = mysqli_fetch_array($res)){
            SOME PROCESS...
            echo $results; 
        }

        closeDBCon($dbc)
    }

and in page:

<?php

$get = getthis($x)
echo '<td>'.$get.'</td>';

?>

But it doesn’t echo results inside <tr> tags and they appear on top of page. It is probably echoing instead of return, but what is causing this problem?

Answer 1

As you say yourself, echo instead of return is the problem. echo just prints to the screen exactly when the method is encountered. A possible solution can be to accumlate your results in a variable $output throughout the while loop. Once you’re done, you return the contents of $output.

function getthis($x){
    $dbc = getDBCon();
    $output = "";
    if($dbc) {
        $sql = "SELECT * FROM `names`";
        $res = mysqli_query($dbc, $sql);
        while($data = mysqli_fetch_array($res)){
            // SOME PROCESS...
            $output .= $results;
        }
        closeDBCon($dbc);
    }
    return $output;
}