Passing a variable in PHP Global or with a function? - php

Question

I am bulding a small ajax chat site and am adding an image upload with msg functionality built in PHP, MySQL and jquery with ajax. My code currently will let you upload a message, I can get the image ready for upload and store URL for the database.
But I need to pass the variable to another if statement checking when the user submits a message.
I cannot seem to get it across and into my database.
Tryed global var, other stuff - think must be missing something. It is probably something obvious, excuse the code I am a graphic designer learning code!
$imageurl = "";
if (isset($_FILES["file"])) {
//properties of uploaded file
$name = $_FILES["file"] ["name"];
$type = $_FILES["file"] ["type"];
$size = $_FILES["file"] ["size"];
$temp = $_FILES["file"] ["tmp_name"];
$error = $_FILES["file"] ["error"];
if ($error > 0) {
die("Error uploaded file!");
}
else
{
if ($type == "video/avi" || $size > 2000000) {
?>
<br>
<p><?die("format is not allowed or size too big!");?></p>
<?
}
else
{
move_uploaded_file($temp, "msg_image/" . $name);
}
}
//store url for insertation
$imageurl = "msg_image/" . $name;
echo '<p>You added a ' . $name . ' to your message</p>';
return $imageurl;
}
/////need the var in here to store and update mysql database
if (isset($_POST['message'])) {
$tostore = $imageurl;
$username = protect($_POST['username']);
$message = protect($_POST['message']);
$time = time();
$sql = "INSERT INTO messages
(username, msgcontent, imageurl, msgtime)
VALUES ('$username', '$message', '$tostore', $time)";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
}

Answer 1

Your "return $imageurl" statement is stopping your script prematurely.
http://php.net/manual/en/function.return.php
i.e.
echo "hello";
return "world";
echo "!";
will only return
hello