Passing a variable into php function mysql query

programming
1

I’m trying to pass a variable from within a swf to a php service to get some crap out of the db.

when I do this:

function getProjectThumbs()
{
	$sql = 'SELECT `project_display` FROM `tbl_images` WHERE locate( \'1\', project_id ) ORDER BY `project_displayid`';
	return mysql_query($sql);
}

works totally fine, but when I remove the hardcoded item in

WHERE locate( \'1\', project_id )

and replace it with

WHERE locate( \'$var\', project_id )

to become this

function getProjectThumbs($var)
{
	$sql = 'SELECT `project_display` FROM `tbl_images` WHERE locate( \'$var\', project_id ) ORDER BY `project_displayid`';
	return mysql_query($sql);
}

I get no results. can I not pass a variable this way? any help is greatly appreciated!