How does "return" work in a function?

[bakertaylor28]

I have a situation where i've used a session variable to store a user's custom session privilege to be used to determine which version of a table to show based on the user's predefined privilege. (a one character VARCHAR string which is set to 0, 1, or 2 in the SQL table where 0 means banned, 1 means regular user, and 2 means app administrator). Can I declare in a function "return priv" and use it like the following, or does "return" work differently in a function?

<?php
 
function privcheck() {
 $priv = $_SESSION['priv'] ;
 return $priv;
}
 
if ( privcheck()=== 0) {
echo 'do code for case 0';
}
 
if ( privcheck() ===1) {
echo 'do code for case 1';
}
 
if ( privcheck() ===2) {
echo 'do code for case 2';
}
 
exit;
?>
 

[AjayGohil]

Hello

firstly you have to assign value $priv and you can use == instead of === because of === check value with their datatype.

For more information you can refer following:
https://www.w3schools.com/php/keywor...from%20running.
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/php/php_functions.htm

[bakertaylor28]

Which, from my understanding, is what the return is for in the function:

 function privcheck() {
$priv = $_SESSION['priv'];
  return $priv;
}
 

So That, within the If statement the following become more or less equivalent:

if ( $priv === foo) {
 
}
 

if ( privcheck() === foo) {
 
}
 

Also, using === instead of == prevents code injection, because of the fact that (in this case) SQL returns the value as a string, not an integer. This in turn prevents exploitative code injection by using an unexpected datatype, and then requiring that datatype.