Expressionengine tags inside php

Question

In expressionengine with php parse enabled,

if i do the following, it works and i get the username displayed. logged in user is admin. So it echos out admin.

<?php
  $x = '{username}';
  echo $x;
?>

However if i do the following and use the{username} tag insde mkdir() function, then it doesn't work. The directory created will have the name {username} instead of admin. Why is this happening.

<?php
  $x = '{username}';
  mkdir($x);
?>

Answer 1

I'd suggest writing a quick plugin that accepts the logged-in username as a parameter, then does your mkdir() work within the plugin.

class Make_directory
{
    var return_data = '';

    function __construct()
    {
        $this->EE =& get_instance();
        $username = $this->EE->TMPL->fetch_param('username', FALSE);

        if($username != FALSE)
        {
            $dir = mkdir(escapeshellarg($username));
        }

        $this->return_data = $dir;
}

There's more to the plugin, but that's the guts of it. Then call it like {exp:make_directory username="{logged_in_username}"}.