problem with fetching results from mysql via php function - php

Question

can some one point out the problem with this code? It supposed to fetch data from mysql but it returns blank. Here is the full code.
<ul class="list">
<?php
require("object/db.class.php");
error_reporting(0);
function entry_tickets() {
if($_SESSION['dojopress_global:root'] == false) {
$entry_ticket .= <<<ENTRY_TICKET
<li><p><img src="http://cdn1.iconfinder.com/data/icons/humano2/32x32/apps/gnome-keyring-manager.png" />Access denied</p></li>
ENTRY_TICKET;
} elseif($_SESSION['dojopress_global:root'] == true) {
$q = "SELECT * FROM `notice` ORDER BY nid LIMIT 12 DESC";
$r = mysql_query($q);
if ( mysql_num_rows($r) == 0 ) {
$entry_ticket .= <<<ENTRY_TICKET
<li><p><img src="http://cdn1.iconfinder.com/data/icons/humano2/32x32/status/dialog-information.png" /> Nothing to display</p></li>
ENTRY_TICKET;
} elseif ( $r !== false && mysql_num_rows($r) > 0 ) {
while ( $a = mysql_fetch_array($r) ) {
$nid = stripslashes($a['nid']);
$note = stripslashes($a['note']);
$type = stripslashes($a['type']);
$private = stripslashes($a['private']);
$date = stripslashes($a['date']);
$author = stripslashes($a['author']);
function note_type($type) {
if($type == 1) { $type = "posted a comment!"; } elseif($type == 2) { $type = "raised a support ticket!"; } else { }
return ($type);
}
$entry_ticket .= <<<ENTRY_TICKET
<li><p> $athor, note_type($type)</p></li>
ENTRY_TICKET;
return $entry_ticket;
}
}
}
}
echo entry_tickets();
?>
</ul>
<div style="clear:both;height:10px;"></div>
sorry forgot db.class.php
<?php
session_start();
//connect.php
$host = "localhost";
$db_user = "root";
$db_pass = "";
$db_name = "au";
$connectClass = mysql_connect("$host", "$db_user", "$db_pass") or die ("Couldn't establish connection to database server.");
$dbObject = mysql_select_db("$db_name", $connectClass) or die ("Couldn't select database.");
?>
error reporting disabled error code
Warning: mysql_num_rows(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in D:\wamp\www\ageis\note.php on line 22

Answer 1

Your mysql syntax looks bad. You have:
SELECT * FROM `notice` ORDER BY nid LIMIT 12 DESC
try
SELECT * FROM `notice` ORDER BY nid DESC LIMIT 12
Erik's comments should have pointed you in the right direction, however:
Figure out where PHP logs errors. Either turn up php's error reporting level so you see more errors, or start tailing your apache error_log
You should always check for errors after running mysql_query and do some sort of logging on failure. This is probably best accomplished by writing a wrapper function for mysql_query that does this, or using a 3rd party db wrapper that has already solved this problem.

Answer 2

You're redefining function note_type every time through your while loop. You have a return call outside the function, below it. Really I can't see how this is even syntactically correct. It looks like you have a large problem with mismatched brackets.
As for an actual database issue, you should check mysql_error() if no rows return from the call because it's likely something went wrong.
Also I recommend using PDO which is a true database class instead of the native function based ones.