Arduinojson pass variables scope - c++

Question

I am having trouble with the code below. I'm coding a ESP8266 wifi module so that it will register automatically to a MQTT server. To make it easy to configure I made a portal that you can access when you first connect the device. Here you can enter the API key and the IOT path name of your device. I want to load and store these configs from a json.config file. This works, expect I can't seem to pass the variables to the void setup scope. The code is stil filled with my last efforts.
Any pointers on how to fix this?
#include <ArduinoJson.h>
#include <ESP8266WebServer.h>
#include "FS.h"
ESP8266WebServer server ( 80 );
char* ssid;
char* password;
char* apikey;
char* iotpath;
void setup() {
const char* values = loadConfig();
Serial.println(values);
// declare ssid and password
//char* ssid = "xxxxxxx";
//char* password = "xxxxxxxx";
// start serial connection and SPIFFS
Serial.begin (115200);
SPIFFS.begin();
Serial.println(ssid);
Serial.println(password);
Serial.println(apikey);
Serial.println(iotpath);
// WiFi connection sequence
WiFi.begin ( ssid, password );
while ( WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED ) {
delay ( 500 ); Serial.print ( "." );
}
// WiFi success print
Serial.println ( "" );
Serial.print ( "Connected to " ); Serial.println ( ssid );
Serial.print ( "IP address: " ); Serial.println ( WiFi.localIP() );
// Check if SPIFSS is started
if (!SPIFFS.begin())
{
Serial.println("SPIFFS Mount failed");
} else {
Serial.println("SPIFFS Mount succesfull");
}
// check if config file was loaded
/*
if (!loadConfig()) {
Serial.println("Failed to load config");
} else {
Serial.println("Config loaded");
}*/
// Server root handling
server.serveStatic("/img", SPIFFS, "/img");
server.serveStatic("/", SPIFFS, "/index.html");
server.serveStatic("/css", SPIFFS, "/css");
server.begin();
Serial.println ( "HTTP server started" );
}
void loop() {
// put your main code here, to run repeatedly:
server.handleClient();
delay(100);
//Serial.println(".");
}
const char* loadConfig() {
File configFile = SPIFFS.open("/config.json", "r");
if (!configFile) {
Serial.println("Failed to open config file");
//return false;
}
size_t size = configFile.size();
if (size > 1024) {
Serial.println("Config file size is too large");
//return false;
}
// Allocate a buffer to store contents of the file.
std::unique_ptr<char[]> buf(new char[size]);
// We don't use String here because ArduinoJson library requires the input
// buffer to be mutable. If you don't use ArduinoJson, you may as well
// use configFile.readString instead.
configFile.readBytes(buf.get(), size);
StaticJsonBuffer<200> jsonBuffer;
JsonObject& json = jsonBuffer.parseObject(buf.get());
if (!json.success()) {
Serial.println("Failed to parse config file");
//return false;
}
const char* ssid = json["ssid"];
const char* password= json["password"];
const char* apikey = json["apikey"];
const char* iotpath = json["iotpath"];
//String ssid_string = String(ssid);
//return ssid;
}