Difference Between PHP Echo and PHP Return in Plain English

What is the difference between PHP echo and PHP return in plain English?

I'm going to give a completely non-technical answer on this one.

Let's say that there is a girl named Sally Function. You want to know if she likes you or not. So since you're in grade school you decide to pass Sally a note (call the function with parameters) asking her if she likes you or not. Now what you plan on doing is asking her this and then telling everyone what she tells you. Instead, you ask her and then she tells everyone. This is equivalent to returning (you getting the information and doing something with it) vs her echoing (telling everyone without you having any control).

In your case what is happening is that when Sally echos she is taking the control from you and saying "I'm going to tell people this right now" instead of you being able to take her response and do what you wanted to do with it. The end result is, however, that you were telling people at the same time since you were echoing what she had already echoed but didn't return (she cut you off in the middle of you telling your class if she liked you or not)

Difference between echo and return in php?

echo outputs content to the console or the web browser.

Example:

echo "Hey, this is now showing up on your screen!";

---

return returns a value at the end of a function or method.

Example:

function my_function()
{
    return "Always returns this";
}

echo my_function(); // displays "Always returns this"

diference between return , echo and print keyword in PHP

return is a language construct used to exit a function and give a value to the caller of the function.

echo and print are both language constructs that output strings. The main difference is that echo can take multiple arguments separated by commas, but print accepts only a single argument.

php echo vs return, which way is better?

Option 2 gives you the most flexibility when reusing the code. Next time you use it, you may not want to echo it out directly, but to perform other actions on it, store it for later etc

rest echo vs return in GET

Returning from a function does not actually render any content to the response. You may have seen people returning data in different frameworks but the framework is actually echoing the data for you behind the scenes.

what's the difference between return/echo json_encode in php

return will not give any response in case of using ajax where as echo will give you the response.If you are using server side scripting only the probably you dont need to echo it.Instead of it you can use return.

Look at this example and the way which the functions are called

function  myFun($value){
  return 'This is the value '.$value;
}

echo myFun(10);//Output This is the value 10
myFun(10);//Will not give you any output

function  myFun($value){
  echo 'This is the value '.$value;
}

myFun(10);//Output This is the value 10
echo myFun(10);//Output This is the value 10

In case of ajax

$.ajax({
        url     :   'mypage.php',
        type    :   "POST",
        success :   function(res){
          alert(res);
        }
 });

In mypage.php

 echo 'Hello';//This will send Hello to the client which is the response

but

return 'Hello';//Will not send anything.So you wont get any response

---

Related Topics