Codeigniter recursive function not returning value - php

Question

I have issues with codeigniter recursive function which returns blank value. below is my function.
function recursive_data($url){
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$output = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$instaArr = (array) json_decode($output);
// print_r($instaArr); // print value here
if( $instaArr['pagination'] == "" ) {
return $instaArr['data'];
} else {
return $this->recursive_data($instaArr['pagination']->next_url);
}
}
I am calling this above function in another function like this
$return_data = $this->recursive_data($url);
It is returning blank value. while it is printing the value in commented code print_r($instaArr)

Answer 1

please use it as bellow.
function recursive_data($url){
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$output = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$instaArr = json_decode($output,true);
// print_r($instaArr); // print value here
if( $instaArr['pagination'] == "" ) {
return $instaArr['data'];
} else {
return $this->recursive_data($instaArr['pagination']->next_url);
}
}

Answer 2

What about this ?
function recursive_data($url)
{
$objCurlData = new stdClass();
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$output = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$instaArr = (array) json_decode($output);
// print_r($instaArr); // print value here
if( $instaArr['pagination'] == "" ) {
$objCurlData->data = $instaArr['data'];
} else {
$objCurlData->objChild = $this->recursive_data($instaArr['pagination']->next_url);
}
return $objCurlData;
}