onionradish

Thanks for the info -- I'd have never found it anywhere else. For reference to others, this is what worked: _init.php function text_or_placeholder($fieldname){ $text = wire('page')->get($fieldname); if (!$text){ $text = wire('fields')->get($fieldname)->placeholder; } return $text; } Is there somewhere I should have found it?

I want to make a general-purpose function to return either the text of a field or its placeholder value if the text is blank. I'm getting errors that I don't understand. I've enabled the "_init.php" pre-processor from config.php with the intent to use it as a general controller to intialize variables that will be used by page templates. I've added the "global" keyword to the function to access the ProcessWire objects. I'm getting errors when it attempts to access page/field values. What am I doing wrong? _init.php: <?php function text_or_placeholder($fieldname){ global $page, $fields; $text = $page->get($fieldname); # error here if (!$text){ $text = $fields->get($fieldname)->placeholder; } return $text; } echo $page->get('jumbotron_headline'); # this works echo $fields->get('jumbotron_headline')->placeholder; # this works echo text_or_placeholder('jumbotron_headline'); # this errors ?>