Re: Good way to make variables global (?)

Erica-- I sympathize ;-) The problem turns up in passing values from HTML forms to functions or method calls... The HTML form has fields named "customer_ID", "company", etc. PHP will create globals from these with the name $customer_ID, $company, etc. I've started using something like the below: // all the field names in an array $customer_fields= array ( 'customer_ID', 'name_first', 'name_last', 'company', 'eMail', ... 'isReseller', 'isDistributor', 'date_created', 'date_last_update' ); function getCustomerProfile($my_customer) { // retrieve customer data from database // These are the HTML form variables, and have to be global global $customer_fields; reset ($customer_fields); // this is the global field list defined above while (list ($key,$value)=each ($customer_fields)) { // for each field eval("global $".$value.";"); // this creates the global inside the function } // it's very likely there's a different, better solution to this! $UID=$eMail; $my_customer->get_Profile($UID); // copy the database record to the form global variables reset ($customer_fields); // this is the global field list defined above while (list ($key,$value)=each ($customer_fields)) { // for each field if (isset($my_customer->$value)) $$value=$my_customer->$value; } // while } and of course, the fields have the same names as my SQL columns... I expect there's a more elegant way to do this. regards Peter At 5:32 PM -0700 10/9/00, Lars Torben Wilson wrote: >Erica Douglass writes: >> I recently stumbled upon a way to make all variables global. I did this >> because I got sick of writing out global variable after global variable in > > my functions. >.... > > >> My impression: This is a very cool snippet of code... as long as you >> understand the implications. >> >> Erica > >Here's the first thing I notice: the above code extracts _all_ >elements of $GLOBALS, for _each_ element of $GLOBALS. In other words, >extract() already extracts() all of the elements of the array it is >given; you don't need to do it once for each element. So if your >$GLOBALS array has, say, 20 elements, the above code is doing 20 times >the work it needs to do. Try this: > >function example_function() { > extract($GLOBALS); > . . . >} ... -- AzByCx DwEvFu GtHsIr JqKpLo MnNmOl PkQjRi ShTgUf VeWdXc YbZa&@ Peter Fraterdeus http://www.midsummernightstamps.com Magical Images from the Moon's Garden! Type on the Edge of History; In Search of the Wild Photon, &c. http://www.dezinecafe.com/fraterdeus BookSense http://www.booksense.com Independent local booksellers on the web.