How to return more than 1 values at a time in php function

Question

I built this php function,

function refs()
{
    
    $total_ref = "1111";

    $active_ref = "100";

        return ("refs") ? "$total_ref" : "";
    
}

Now, I want to return the total_ref and active_ref at the same time.... How do I return both as an array and call the array

if I have

return [
        'total_ref'  => $total_ref,
        'active_ref' => $active_ref
    ];

Then with $refs = refs();

how do I echo active_ref or total_ref

Answer 1

You can just return an associative array with the values.

function refs()
{        
    $total_ref = '1111';

    $active_ref = '100';

    return [
        'total_ref'  => $total_ref,
        'active_ref' => $active_ref
    ];
}

In order to echo the result of the function, you can access array elements by keys.

$refs = refs();
echo $refs['total_ref'];
echo $refs['active_ref'];