Can't get data out of variable - php

Question

I've made a curl request. I put the curl instructions in one class function:
class Curly {
var $data;
function GetRequest($url) {
$ch = curl_init();
$timeout = 5;
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout);
$this->data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
//this is what i was missing --> return $this->data;
}
I put the database query in another class function.
include('class.curly.php');
class mongoSearchForInfoOnEsd {
public function getEsdsFbInfo($esdID) {
$mongoApiKey = "xx";
$requestParams= "xx";
$url = "xx";
$fbInfo = (new Curly)->GetRequest($url);
//this is what i was missing --> return $fbInfo;
}
In the index.php, an HTTP post from a webhook is coming through, in which parsing through some strings to obtain 2 ids is handled. I then send one of those ids to the mongodb curl request, everything goes good. The correct response comes back, I only know this b/c of the var_dump of the var_dump in the curly class....BUT in the index file I'm struggling to get to get the data out of the var and assign its values to any variable I want.
How can I get the data out? I know its there, but where?
I'm so stuck.
# get ytID from http post
#get EsdID from http post
$httpPostData = file_get_contents('php://input');
$postDataDecoded = urldecode($httpPostData);
$ytID = substr($postDataDecoded, strpos($postDataDecoded, "docid=") + strlen("docid="), );
$esdID = substr($postDataDecoded, strpos($postDataDecoded, "m\": \"") + strlen ("m\": "),;
*$esdData = (new mongoSearchForInfoOnEsd)->getEsdsFbInfo("$esdID");*
$obj = json_decode($esdData, true);
echo $obj;
OK, I've added return and I can see the data, but no operations are working on returned data.
edit ---> put return in both classes, now its fully operational.

Answer 1

As lazyhammer said you need to write the following in the end of your method GetRequest($url)
return $this->data;
Also, in a class, a function is called a method.
To be more explicit.
var_dump doesn't return the data. it's only sending them to the client(your browser) which will display it.
to return the data computed in your method back to the caller, you need to use the keyword return at the end of your method.
When your computer will see return he bring back the data to the caller. it means everything you write after return won't be executed.

Answer 2

Just because you are assigning a value to the class variable data doesn't mean that value is being returned when you call the function getRequest. Therefore, in order to use the data from an outside class, you need to return the final value:
function GetRequest($url){
$ch = curl_init();
$timeout = 5;
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout);
$this->data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
return $this->data;
}
You may not even need to keep the variable $data around, unless there is more to your code that you are not showing, you could simply return curl_exec($ch)
To further answer your question from your comments below, this is from php.net:
This function displays structured information about one or more expressions that includes its type and value. Arrays and objects are explored recursively with values indented to show structure.
As you can see, var_dump is used for display purposes only.