Access an Array Returned by a Function

Question

Is there anyway to directly access the data returned in an array without a temporary variable?

Currently, my code is as follows:

function getData($id) {
    // mysql query
    return mysql_fetch_array($result);
}

$data = getData($id);
echo $data['name'];

Is there a direct way to get the returned data without the temporary variable?

Answer 1

PHP 5.4 added array Dereferencing, here's the example from PHP's Array documentation:

Example #7 Array dereferencing

function getArray() {
    return array(1, 2, 3);
}

// on PHP 5.4
$secondElement = getArray()[1];

// previously
$tmp = getArray();
$secondElement = $tmp[1];

Answer 2

with arrays the answer is no, but you can use objects:

function getData($id) {
   // mysql query
   return mysql_fetch_object($result);
}

echo getData($id)->name;

Answer 3

Not really. You could define a function to do it, though:

function array_value($array, $key) {
    return $array[$key];
}

// and then
echo array_value(getData($id), 'name');

The only other way, which probably won't help you much in this case, is to use list() which will get you the first n items in the returned array. You have to know the order of the items in the list beforehand, though:

function test() {
    return array(1, 2, 3, 4);
}

list($one, $two, $three) = test();
// now $one is 1, $two is 2, $three is 3

Answer 4

I have asked a similar question some time ago.

The short answer is no, you can not. Yet, if you just need the first value in the array, you can use reset():

function getArray()
{
    array('la', 'li', 'lu');
}
echo reset(getArray()); // echos "la"

Answer 5

Unfortunately, no.

You could do something like this:

function getData($id) {
    // mysql query
    return mysql_fetch_array($result);
}

foreach(getData("your_input_query") as $key=>$value){
   echo $value;
}

And then you could use a switch or if/else statements to only perform other functions on the returned data if they equal a certain value (in this case, if $key == 'name').

In short, it's much easier just to set that temporary variable and access it that way.

Answer 6

I think the verbage is a little wrong for your question, but I think are looking to accomplish something like this:

echo getData($id)->someArrayOffset;

While you can do this with mysql_fetch_object, I'll show you how you can do this using ArrayObject in PHP5, or by returning your own object in PHP 4 so that you can find a usefulness for it outside of function that return objects for you. Here's your same function using ArrayObject in PHP5:

function getData($id) {
    // mysql query
    return new ArrayObject( mysql_fetch_array($result) );
}

echo getData($id)->name;