mysqli_connect with arrays not in a function

Ok, i may be thinking of Java or i may be wrong but can't you call arrays from inside functions without passing them in? Like this

$food['soup'] = "wet";
$foot['carrot'] = "hard";

function makeFood(){
... play with the arrays or whatever
}

doesn't that work? Or is there a way to pass in arays with out having to pass them in.... man its late, ha.

This is what i'm trying to do. I've setup my database variables in a file called conf.php and thers also a function in there called goDB(); goDB() connects to my database using the variables from the array in the file. I call goDB() from other files by importing conf.php into them. I want to be able to just call goDB() and dont worry about passing in the array.

Thanks for the help. Oh, and after thinking about it, no i was wrong, in Java arays are special because they don't create a copy of themselves in a function when passed in but you still need to pass them in, I belive PHP has the same rule. so I'm going at this wrong, obviously.

thanks for the help.

You can, has to do with variable scope. In your function either use the global keyword or use $GLOBALS.

e.g:

function makeFood()
{
global $food, $foot;
echo '<pre>';
print_r($food);
print_r($foot);
echo '</pre>';
}

// or
function makeFood()
{
echo '<pre>';
print_r($GLOBALS['food']);
print_r($GLOBALS['foot']);
echo '</pre>';
}


Ref:
http://www.zend.com/manual/language.variables.scope.php

Good luck;

Thank you very much. that is very helpful but now i'm getting errors as if I made my arrays wrong, i don't think I have but heres what they look like

global $gs_database['host'] = "localhost"; // database host ( for example 'localhost' )
global $gs_database['database'] = "guildspace"; // database name
global $gs_database['username'] = "root"; // database user
global $gs_database['password'] = ""; // database user's password

Heres the error

Parse error: parse error, unexpected '[', expecting ',' or ';' in conf.php on line 3

note, that first line i posted is line 3.


I've also tried telling my function to use thoes vars as globals as the link you gave me said by using this line:

global $gs_database['host'],$gs_database['username'],$gs_database['password'],$gs_database['database'];

and it still give me the same error.

Close, use global on the array itself, not individual elements:

global $gs_database;
$gs_database['host'] = "localhost"; // database host ( for example 'localhost' )
$gs_database['database'] = "guildspace"; // database name
$gs_database['username'] = "root"; // database user
$gs_database['password'] = ""; // database user's password


Good luck;

Awesome!!!!

Thank you so much, it works perfectly now. And puting in global $gs_database; is so much easier!

I'll get a hang of this PHP stuff sooner or later.

Cool, you're welcome :)