This tutorial will show you how to store a variable in a function OOP style. It's very simple to do this, but knowledge of PHP is required to fully understand this tutorial (not much, but some).
First, a little background reference. Most people notice that any variables set in a function do not appear outside of the function (meaning you can call the function, then echo a variable from with-in it, and nothing will happen). So unless you pass a variable by reference using the ampersand '&', or return some value, you can't get much out of a function.
So there's a very simple way to fix this. Use the word "static". Simply take a look at the following example script for a better understanding. And don't worry if you don't understand it, the orange comments are there to help you know what it does.
<?php /* First we create the function. It takes 1 optional parameter $y. $y is used to demonstrate the difference between a regular variable, and a static one. */ function remember($y=0){ /* Now the fun part. Telling the function to remember 1 variable $x. */ static $x; /* Increment $y */ $y++; /* Make $x equal to $x+$y */ $x += $y; /* Display the results */ echo 'x = '.$x."\n" .'y = '.$y."\n"; } /* Now we run some tests to see if everything works right */ echo remember()."\n"; echo remember()."\n"; echo remember()."\n"; echo remember()."\n"; /* For fun, make $y = 5 */ echo remember(5); ?>
Now, if you run the above example script as-is, what you see on screen should look something like:
x = 1 y = 1 x = 2 y = 1 x = 3 y = 1 x = 4 y = 1 x = 10 y = 6If it doesn't, then you changed something, or you need to get a better version of PHP.
Also note, it's not recommended that you use this method to simply get a variable from place to place. There are other, more efficient methods to do that.
