I'm trying to build a very basic API, I've got a query that pulls data from a MySQL view, I can echo the query out as json no problem but I want to put the query in a function in order to be able to call it from the API script...I'm just having some trouble putting the code into a function.

Here's the ode that works.....

```
<?php
$servername = "database.com";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "db1";

// Create connection
$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password,          $dbname);
// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
} 

$sql = "SELECT * from DB_Available_Dates";
$result = $conn->query($sql);

if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
// output data of each row
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
    echo $row["year"]. " - " . $row["Month"]. " " . $row["the_days"]. "<br>";
}
} else {
echo "0 results";
}

$conn->close();
?>

```

...and this is my attempt to put it into a function (that doesn't work!)...

```
//Connection as above
function available_dates() {
$sql = "SELECT * from DB_Available_Dates";
$result = $conn->query($sql);

if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
// output data of each row

$encodeArray = array();

while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
    $encodeArray[] = $row;
}
} else {
echo "0 results";
}
$dates = array();
$dates = json_encode($encodeArray);
return $dates;
}

available_dates();

$conn->close();
?>

```

I've just started with functions so I expect my errors to be quite comical!
...do I need to use echo to call the function?