PHP Function Accessing Database Connection

Question

How do I allow a function to access a database connection without using GLOBAL?

config.php

 DEFINE (\'DB_HOSTNAME\', \'hostname\');
 DEFINE (\'DB_DAT         


        

Answer 1

Either pass the database handle to your function, as @KingCrunch and others have said, or call a function that returns the handle:

In config.php:

function get_dbc() {
    $dbc = mysqli_connect(DB_HOSTNAME, DB_USERNAME, DB_PASSWORD, DB_DATABASE);
    if(!$dbc) die("Unable to connect to MySQL: " . mysqli_error($dbc));
    return $dbc;
}

In functions.php:

require_once('config.php');

function something()
{
    $dbc = get_dbc();
    $info = mysqli_query($dbc, "SELECT info FROM text") or die("Error: ".mysqli_error($dbc));
}

You may wish to look at The mysqli Extension and Persistent Connections for details on how you can prevent the connection from being re-established on each call to get_dbc(). There are alternative approaches to this, such as creating a singleton class for your database connection.