PDO object not in scope of a function - php

Question

OK, I see some similar questions to mine, but their examples all use PHP classes...mine does not. Maybe that's the problem? I shouldn't need classes because my site is exceedingly simple at this point in time.
Anyway, I'm trying to use PDO to connect to a MySQL db. I connect to the db fine in a file called config.php, and include this file in index.php with require_once().
I can successfully query the db from another file called process.php, but the problem is within a function within that file; it seems my DBO object is out of scope within that function.
Here are the relevant code snippets:
index.php
require_once('./lib/config.php');
config.php
// tested and connects fine
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=' . $hostname . ';dbname=' . $dbname, $username, $password, array(
PDO::ATTR_PERSISTENT => true
));
process.php
<?php
...
// can call $pdo fine in this file outside of functions
...
function authenticate($u, $p) {
// can't call $pdo in here, error says $pdo is non-object
$que = $pdo->query('select user_id, user_pass from users where user_name = \'' . $u . '\' limit 1');
...
}
?>
By the way, I'm using PDO because I was having similar trouble with mysqli, and am trying to get away from mysql, which is apparently depreciated and discouraged.
EDIT: I should have clarified first based on the number of responses I got on this matter: I did try to pass $pdo in as a param to the function, with no luck or change in the error message.
SOLUTION: OK, apparently the problem was that I needed to add require_once('config.php') in my process.php file as well. Not sure why (wouldn't it already be included when index.php was run first?). Then I was able to successfully pass $pdo in as a param to my function, and voila.

Answer 1

That's pretty basic PHP stuff. Variables inside functions are local variables unless you use the global keyword to load them. I suppose you want this:
function authenticate(PDO $pdo, $u, $p) {
$que = $pdo->query('select user_id, user_pass from users where user_name = \'' . $u . '\' limit 1');
//...
}
Edit: If PHP claims that $pdo is not an object, it's not an object, so it doesn't really matter how it's passed to the function. Inspect the variable right before you call authenticate():
var_dump($pdo);
Without the relevant code there's no way to say why. (Assuming it's true that new PDO succeeds.)

Answer 2

You need to pass the PDO object as a parameter to the authenticate() function:
function authenticate(PDO $pdo, $u, $p) {
// ..as in the question..
}
Oh and you should be using a place holder for that username in the query, not string concatenation which is prone to SQL injection attacks.

Answer 3

because $pdo has been declared outside of the function authenticate it isn't available inside it. You need to either pass $pdo in
function authenticate($u, $p, $pdo) {
$que = $pdo->query('...');
}
or declare it as global inside the function to be able to access it
function authenticate($u, $p) {
global $pdo;
$que = $pdo->query('...');
}