Header redirects not working as expected - php

Question

I have the following function which retrives the currently logged in users' username and finds out their access level from the database (either 'requested','user', or 'admin')
function fetchAccess()
{
global $con;
$username = $_SESSION['username'];
$q = "SELECT access FROM users WHERE username = '$username' LIMIT 1";
$result = mysql_query($q, $con);
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
$access = $row['access'];
if(isset($_SESSION['username']))
{
if($access == 'user')
{
return 1; // Returns 1 if access level is user
}
elseif($access == 'admin')
{
return 2; // Returns 2 if access level is admin
}
elseif($access == 'requested')
{
return 3; // Returns 3 if access level is requested
}
}
}
When I am checking whether the user is an admin using the follow code, this works correctly.
/* Redirects user if access level does not equal admin */
$result = fetchAccess();
if($result != 2)
{
header("location:index.php");
}
However when I check to see whether the access is 'requested' - this following is NOT working correctly.
<?php
/* Redirects user if access level does is 'requested' */
$result = fetchAccess();
if($result == 3)
{
header("location:redirect.php");
}
?>
Does anyone know why this is?

Answer 1

You can do this:
function fetchAccess()
{
global $con;
$username = $_SESSION['username'];
$q = "SELECT access FROM users WHERE username = '$username' LIMIT 1";
$result = mysql_query($q, $con);
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
global $access
$access = $row['access'];
}
then:
global $access
if($access != admin){
header("location:redirect.php");
}

Answer 2

Have you verified that $result actually equal to 3? it may very well be that in the first instance $result == "" which is != 2 so it is not working at all. Try debugging it by including a header like:
<?php
$result = fetchAccess();
header("X-my-result: [$result]");
if ( $result == 3 ) {
header("Location: redirect.php");
}
?>
and see what you get back for value of $result in the headers.

Answer 3

do an echo statement to see what is return in the $result variable. btw, i'm not sure if your logic in your first redirect statement is to encompass both 'user' and 'requested', but those users will be redirected to index.php