[SOLVED] call function in middle of a variable?

[vynsane]

I'm migrating to a pseudo-template system (header/footer includes) and have created a variable that will send the title of that page to the <title> in the header include. The problem I'm facing is that some of my pages had functions in the title tag, and I'm having a problem getting the function into the new variable. An example of the code prior would've been:

 

<title>Spider-man Comics
<?php comicTitle($ComicTable['title'], $Vol);
         echo "Issue $IssueNum"; ?></title>

 

the function looks something like this:

 

function comicTitle($fulltitle, $volNum) {
     $query = mysql_query("SELECT title FROM ComicTable WHERE title = '".$fulltitle."'");
     $rows = mysql_num_rows($query);
     $Title = stripslashes($fulltitle);
     echo "$Title";
     if($rows >1) {
         echo " Vol. ".$volNum."";
     }
}

 

What I would like to be able to do on my other page (the function is in an include) is something like this:

 

$pageTitle = "Spider-man Comics" comicTitle($ComicTable['title'], $Vol); "Issue $IssueNum";

 

but that's obviously not working... I've tried variations of the $pageTitle variable, and variations on the comicTitle function, including using "compact()" and "extract()" or just trying to string my two variables ($Title and $Vol) into one variable and returning that one variable, but it's not working. Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[taith]

you need to escape it... like so...

 

$pageTitle = "Spider-man Comics ".comicTitle($ComicTable['title'], $Vol)." Issue $IssueNum";

[vynsane]

Thanks for the quick reply, but that doesn't work - it just spits out the function before everything else on the page, doesn't contain it inside the variable "$pageTitle".

[taith]

that would be because in the variable your echoing the information... you need to return; it

[vynsane]

huh... weird, when i tried that before, it didn't work, but now it is.

 

function comicTitle($fulltitle, $volNum) {
     $query = mysql_query("SELECT title FROM ComicTable WHERE title = '".$fulltitle."'");
     $rows = mysql_num_rows($query);
     $Title = stripslashes($fulltitle);
     if($rows >1) {
         $comicFullTitle = "$Title Vol. $volNum";
     }
     else {
         $comicFullTitle = "$Title";
     }
     return $comicFullTitle;
}

 

I think I had

 

$comicFullTitle = "".$Title." Vol. ".$volNum."";

 

instead...  that might've been the culprit.

 

now I just have to go back to everywhere else I use that function and change it to use the return instead of the echo  :'( :-\

[taith]

yupyup!

 

functions as they "should" be... with a few exceptions... should always return the data, never echo... you'll save yourself ALOT of problems in the long run... also then you can use functions within functions

[vynsane]

Yeah, I'm going to look into that, too.

 

Found an even better way to do it than

 

$pageTitle = "Spider-man Comics ".comicTitle($ComicTable['title'], $Vol)." Issue $IssueNum";

 

since I have to use it multiple times, with "return" I can turn the function into a variable, and call that variable elsewhere:

 

$comicTitle = comicTitle($ComicTable['title'], $Vol);
$pageTitle = "Spider-man Comics $comicTitle Issue $IssueNum";
...
....
....
...
echo "<div class=\"header\">$comicTitle Issue $Issue</div>\n";

 

Thanks again!