在PHP函数中使用参数文本

Question

I am a little new to the PHP world and despite my googling and manual reading, I can't

I am currently (ethically!) scraping a website that has a number of different categories (let us call them 'alpha', 'beta', 'gamma').

Currently, I go through these steps:

1. Load the file
2. Locate the correct table (php_siomple_dom)

3. Then go through the elements to grab the information.

   $alpha_one = $element -> find etc;
   $alpha_two = $element -> find etc;
   $alpha_n   = $element -> find etc;
   
   $beta_one  = $element -> find etc;
   $beta _two = $element -> find etc;
   $beta_n    = $element -> find etc;
   

4. All of the tables are the same for alpha, beta, gamma; thus I would like to write a function, but I am struggling with how to include the argument name in the variables I create. This was my idea, but it does not work.

   function grab($argument) {
   
       $argument . "_one" = $element -> find etc;
       $argument . "_two" = $element -> find etc;
       $argument . "_n"   = $element -> find etc;
   
   }
   

Thus, I could use:

grab('alpha');

grab('beta');

grab('gamma');

without having to write out the code for each table

I've looked into 'magic methods', but cannot swing it into working. I would really appreciate if some PHP wizard could shed some light upon this. Thank youu!

Answer 1

That code is rather pointless. the $argument . "_one" variable would exist ONLY within the function, and be destroyed when the function returns. You probably want something more like this:

function grab($argument) {
    $data = array();
    $data[$argument . "_one"] = ...
    $data[$argument . "_two"] = ...
    etc...
    return ($data);
}

Essentially: build an array with dynamic key names, based on your $argument, then return the entire array to the calling context.