Function returning only nulls

[webfoo]

Hello all, it's been a while since I've been on WebmasterWorld. I'm having trouble with a function which will be used frequently throughout the system I'm developing. It is supposed to take in a staff ID number, and returns the staff member's name.

$con

is defined previously in the file and works for all other queries, so that's not the issue. The function is not returning any mysqli_errors, so that's not the issue either. Also, the query

$q

works when entered directly into MySQL. Therefore, the problem lies somewhere in the PHP logic.

I'm only getting null values out of this function. What am I doing wrong?!?!

function nameTheStaff($x) {
$q="SELECT * FROM staff WHERE staff_id='$x'";
$result=mysqli_query($con,$q);
while($r=mysqli_fetch_array($result)) {
$staff=$r['first_name'].' '.$r['last_name'];
}
if (mysqli_errno()) { return mysqli_error(); }
else { return $staff; }
}
}

[brotherhood of LAN]

It's returning null because there isn't a database connection being used.

$con is not in the function's variable scope. You need to either make it global, or pass the $con variable along to the function.

See variable scope [php.net] for reference

[webfoo]

Duh! Thank you for pointing out the obvious mistake. Working properly now.