Creating and Working With Your Own Functions Using PHP, Part Two

Hello there and welcome to part two of Creating and working with your own functions using PHP.

In part two of this tutorial we will cover separating our presentation code from our process code and learn some more things we can do with functions.

Ok let’s now go a little further and separate our presentation code (What I mean is the code block we echo out to our browser) and our process code (Our form processing code).

First we will rename our myfunctions.php file to mydisplay.functions.php. As you figured out this is where our display functions will be. Then we will create our new file process.functions.php and move our form_process function to the new file and remove it from mydisplay.functions.php.

And then make one more edit. Look in form_process function in form_process.functions.php and change this from this:

echo ("You forgot to fill in a field! <a href='form.php'>Go back.</a>");

To this:

echo ("You forgot to fill in a field! <a href='main.php?p=ourform'>Go back.</a>");

Now we got that all done let’s make one more change and that will be in our main.php file, right at the top change this:

<?php

include "myfunctions.php";

?>

To this:

<?php

include "mydisplay.functions.php";

include "process.functions.php";

?>

Save your changes and run main.php in your browser and it works, this is a great way separate your functions into separate files based on what their purpose is and even makes it more easier for code updates and changes.

Another great thing about functions is you can call/execute a function within another function in the next part I will show how to do this.

Now with that all said, let’s get down to it.

First we are going to create a new function in our mydisplay.functions.php file right under our mylink function and call it news_updates() see below:

function news_updates()

{

}

Now insert the following code block in between the braces.

What we are doing here is creating a little update box or news box like something you might put on a website.

First we will open the mydisplay.functions.php file let’s do a little edit to mylinks function like so:

Old:

echo ("<a href='main.php?p=ourform'>Our Form</a>");

New:

echo ("<p><a href='main.php?p=ourform'>Our Form</a></p>");

Save your changes and open main.php. We are going to add the new function call news_updates() right under mylinks(); like so:

default:

mylinks();

news_updates();

break;

Now save your changes and check it out in your browser. As you can see right under your link you now have a little box with a header saying News/Updates and the text area saying text area J.

And yes, as you can see you can call and execute two functions at the same time and both of them being separate from each other.

Next I am going to show you how you can call/execute a function within a function.

First let’s create a function and call it show_news_updates(), open process.functions.php and right at the top place this new function there.

function show_news_updates()

{

echo ("This text is being call/execute from my process.functions.php file.");

}

Save the changes and now open up mydisplayfuntions.php and look for function news_updates() we just recently created. Look for this part in the code block:

Text Area

Remove that and add this:

");

show_news_updates();

echo ("

So you end up with your finished function news_updates() looking like this:

Yup, as you can see there is our new function waiting to be called on and executed. Save your changes and give it a whirl!

There you go, function within a function and as I have mentioned in part one working with functions makes your code easy to update your code and makes your application smaller and easier to manage.

That concludes part two of this tutorial. Please keep in mind that I just covered some basic uses of functions. There is a lot more complex and advanced things that you can do with functions. These tutorials were written just to get you started. I hope you found them useful and helpful. Cheers!