PDO object cant acess inside function - php

Question

In my project i had a file called connection.inc.php which is managing the data base connection using PDO.
include/connection.inc.php
<?php
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "root";
$password = "";
$dbname = "college";
try {
$conn = new PDO("mysql:host=$servername;dbname=$dbname", $username, $password);
// set the PDO error mode to exception
$conn->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
}
catch(PDOException $e)
{
echo "Error: " . $e->getMessage();
}
?>
i included this file in various other pages and it worked perfectly for me. But when i tried to acess the $conn object inside a function it not working. How to fix this problem.

Answer 1

You could do global $conn on top of your functions, but don't. I suggest wrapping it in a singleton instead.
<?php
class Connection {
private static $conn = null;
private $connection = null;
private function __construct() {
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "root";
$password = "";
$dbname = "college";
try {
$this->connection = new PDO("mysql:host=$servername;dbname=$dbname", $username, $password);
// set the PDO error mode to exception
$this->connection->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
} catch (PDOException $e) {
echo "Error: " . $e->getMessage(); // Should look into a different error handling mechanism
}
}
public static function getConnection() {
if (self::$conn === null) {
self::$conn = new self();
}
return self::$conn->connection;
}
}
You can access it via Connection::getConnection()
This also has the advantage of not initializing the connection if the current request doesn't need to use it.

Answer 2

Honestly the simplest method is to set the connection inside of a function then you can use that function in other functions.
Example:
error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
function dataQuery($query, $params) {
$queryType = explode(' ', $query);
// establish database connection
try {
$dbh = new PDO('mysql:host='.DB_HOSTNAME.';dbname='.DB_DATABASE, DB_USERNAME, DB_PASSWORD);
$dbh->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_EMULATE_PREPARES, false);
$dbh->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
}
catch(PDOException $e) {
echo $e->getMessage();
$errorCode = $e->getCode();
}
// run query
try {
$queryResults = $dbh->prepare($query);
$queryResults->execute($params);
if($queryResults != null && 'SELECT' == $queryType[0]) {
$results = $queryResults->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
return $results;
}
$queryResults = null; // first of the two steps to properly close
$dbh = null; // second step to close the connection
}
catch(PDOException $e) {
$errorMsg = $e->getMessage();
echo $errorMsg;
}
}
How To Use In Another Function:
function doSomething() {
$query = 'SELECT * FROM `table`';
$params = array();
$results = dataQuery($query,$params);
return $results[0]['something'];
}

Answer 3

You need to update your file as
<?php
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "root";
$password = "";
$dbname = "college";
//// define global variable
global $connection
try {
$conn = new PDO("mysql:host=$servername;dbname=$dbname", $username, $password);
/// assign the global variable value
$connection = $conn ;
// set the PDO error mode to exception
$conn->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
}
catch(PDOException $e)
{
echo "Error: " . $e->getMessage();
}
?>
Now you can call it any of your function like
function mytest(){
global $connection;
}

Answer 4

The best practice would be to pass the $conn as argument to the function.
But if you really need the function to have no arguments but still use a global variable, then adding this line in your function before using the variable should do the trick:
global $conn; // I want to use the global variable called $conn