$globals

For some reason in one of my scripts I cannot access a global array in a function. The code is as follows:

	$sections=array('Your Details','Product Details');
	
	function form1($values)
	{
	
	foreach($GLOBALS['sections'] as $key => $value)
	{
		//do something
	}

	}

Code (markup):

If I put the array inside the function and address it in the foreach loop as '$sections' it works fine.

I didn't write the whole application and there are several INCLUDES in the script - I think somewhere on a lower level something has been disabled. I don't necessarily want to mess around with any of the core PHP files, but would like to get this to work - is there an alternative way of doing this?

I would ideally prefer to keep the array outside of the function as there will be several functions that need to use the array...

 

If $sections is declared in a non-global context, then it won't be in $GLOBALS. That's almost surely your problem.

You could do this:

global $sections;
$sections = array('Your Details','Product Details');

Code (markup):

(inserting that "global" line before declaring $sections)

But if you really wanted to do the job right, you'd figure out how to avoid having any globals at all.

 

Cheers mate, that has worked. Although in the past I have always managed to get it working without even declaring it as global!

So how do I go about doing it the "right way", as you say?

 

There's nothing wrong with accessing a global variable within a function, the alternative is a mess of passing around pointers and needless copies of data.

As long as you've declared a variable outside of the content of a function, or a namespace, you can declare the scope within any function for which to target that variable. There is no need to ever use the global keyword outside of a function or namespace.

Stay away from "$GLOBALS['...']", that should only ever be used for debugging.

$variable = array();

function one()
{
   global $variable;
   // work with variable
}

function two()
{
   global $variable;
   //work with variable
}

Code (markup):

 

Hi joebert,

That method doesn't seem to work for me. Any ideas why that might be?

 

Depending on your server set-up: before you define $variable as an array, you need to define it as a global.

global $variable;
$variable = array();

function one()
{
   global $variable;
   // work with variable
}

function two()
{
   global $variable;
   //work with variable
}

Code (markup):

 

In 5 years I've never once seen a situation where you had to use global outside of a function/method declaration.

You've got an odd setup if you ask me.

 

It depends on the scope of the executing script. I do a lot of stuff with WordPress, so I've just had to get in the habit of doing it. I figured the OP might be doing something similiar.

 

Normally this would happen if include() is called from within a function. The entire include()d file is within that function's scope.