PHP sprintf and scope

Question

I've been rearranging some code for better readability/maintainability, but hit an issue I can't quite figure out.

The original code was basically as follows:

$myFormat = '/* HTML structure */';

try {
    // SQL queries
    // Sorting and storing relevant data
    echo sprintf($myFormat,$1,$2...$N);
}
catch{
    // Error handling if there's a db issue
}

Which worked but wasn't very well organised, given that a load of unnecessary stuff was contained within the SQL-oriented try/catch block.

So I changed it to the following:

$myFormat = '/* HTML structure */';

function dataHandling($a1,$a2...){
    // Sorting and storing relevant data
    echo sprintf($myFormat,$1,$2...$N);
}

try {
    // SQL queries
    dataHandling($s1,$s2...);
}
catch{
    // Error handling if there's a db issue
}

And everything appears to work except for the echo sprintf line inside dataHandling, which is fairly significant. I've only been writing php for a for days and assume it's a scope issue, but I can't find any info addressing a similar issue.

Answer 1

You need to pass $myFormat as a parameter. Also, the parameters to sprintf must match the function parameters.

function dataHandling($format, $a1,$a2...){
    // Sorting and storing relevant data
    echo sprintf($format,$a1,$a2...);
}

try {
    dataHandling($myFormat, $s1,$s2...);
}
catch{
    // Error handling if there's a db issue
}

Answer 2

Use a global keyword inside the function.

function dataHandling($a1, $a2 ...){
      global $myFormat;
      //remaining code
}

For more information on scope check this out.