Echo out a custom variable

Question

I'm new to PHP and magento. I'm trying to echo out a Custom Global Var called "my_code" in a .php file in the root to debug. None of the samples seem to work. Is there some reference I need to include?

<?php
require_once 'app/Mage.php';
//echo "1"; //This code works when uncomment

$value = Mage::getModel('core/variable')->setStoreId(Mage::app()->getStore()->getId())->loadByCode('my_code')->getValue('text');

echo $value; //This doesn't

Answer 1

Requiring the Mage.php file is not enough to bootstrap Magento as the application still isn't initialised, so none of the following statements will work.

At the bare minimum you are going to want something along the lines of:

require_once 'app/Mage.php';

// Run the engine as administrator
Mage::app('admin');

if( ! Mage::app()->isInstalled()) {
    die('Application is not installed.');
}

$value = Mage::getModel('core/variable')
    ->setStoreId(Mage::app()->getStore()->getId())
    ->loadByCode('my_code')
    ->getValue('text');

Answer 2

to be sure that Magento is bootstrapped completely, you should start by creating a Magento shell script to try things like that.

Create a file under /shell/ with the following content:

<?php
require_once 'abstract.php';
class My_Shell_Script extends Mage_Shell_Abstract
{
    public function run()
    {

    }

}
$shell = new My_Shell_Script();
$shell->run();

You can add your logic in the run method.

I'm not sure what you are exactly trying to do.

===UPDATE===

This does actually work (With Store ID 0):

<?php
require_once 'abstract.php';
class My_Shell_Script extends Mage_Shell_Abstract
{
    public function run()
    {
        Mage::getModel('core/variable')->setCode('my_code')->setPlainValue('testTextValue')->save();
        echo Mage::getModel('core/variable')->loadByCode('my_code')->getValue('text');
    }

}
$shell = new My_Shell_Script();
$shell->run();

are you sure your variable is saved correctly in your database? You might want to look it up in the tables core_variable and core_variable_value