Arrays in PHP header not global in WordPress

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I am creating an array of items in the header that will be called in the index file of a WordPress template. But for some reason I am getting: 

Notice: Undefined variable: img_arr in ... on line 27

Why is this happening when in my header I define it:

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 $img_arr = array();
 $caption_arr = array();

    // Second Featured Image        
        if (class_exists('MultiPostThumbnails')) {
                $image_name = "second-image";
            if (MultiPostThumbnails::has_post_thumbnail('page', $image_name)) {
                $image_id = MultiPostThumbnails::get_post_thumbnail_id( 'page', $image_name, $post->ID );
                $attr = array('class' => "featured-image");
                $image_2 = wp_get_attachment_image( $image_id, 'second-image', false, $attr );
                array_push($img_arr, $image_2);
            }
        };
        $post_thumbnail_id = MultiPostThumbnails::get_post_thumbnail_id( get_post_type(), 'second-image', get_queried_object_id() );
        $post_thumbnail_post = get_post( $post_thumbnail_id );
        $caption_2 = trim( strip_tags( $post_thumbnail_post->post_excerpt ) );
        array_push($caption_arr, $caption_2);

This allows users to add multiple featured images, all the way up to ten images. But it goes unrecognized in the index file: 

foreach($img_arr as $key => $value) {
    echo $value;
    echo '<div class="featured-image-caption">';
    echo $caption[$key];
    echo '</div>';
}

I’ve been working on this for many hours, so I may be overlooking something very simple. Or is it possible that the WordPress function get_header() doesn’t allow arrays to move between files? And if so, is there something I could add to my functions.php to allow arrays to be more global?

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1 comment

  1. I am pretty sure that the WordPress API structure does not allow you to pass variables or arrays the way you think it work work with straight PHP. So instead, consider using a global variable scope to achieve the goals of this function:

    global $img_arr $caption_arr;

    So in your index file you could do something like this:

    global $img_arr $caption_arr;
foreach($img_arr as $key => $value) {
    echo $value;
    echo '<div class="featured-image-caption">';
    echo $caption[$key];
    echo '</div>';
}

    Or you could do it with $GLOBALS:

    $GLOBALS['img_arr'] = array();
$GLOBALS['caption_arr'] = array();

    And then access the values like this:

    foreach($GLOBALS['img_arr'] as $key => $value) {
    echo $value;
    echo '<div class="featured-image-caption">';
    echo $GLOBALS['caption_arr'][$key];
    echo '</div>';
}

    Also you do this to initialize the arrays:

    $img_arr = array();
$caption_arr = array();

    Which means it’s starting from scratch, right?

    Then why are you doing this:

    array_push($img_arr, $image_2);
array_push($caption_arr, $caption_2);

    Wny not just do a simple increment of the array like this:

    $img_arr[] = $image_2;
$caption_arr[] = $caption_2;