Search code examples
phpmysqlpdo

How do I loop through a MySQL query via PDO in PHP?


I'm slowly moving all of my LAMP websites from mysql_ functions to PDO functions and I've hit my first brick wall. I don't know how to loop through results with a parameter. I am fine with the following:

foreach ($database->query("SELECT * FROM widgets") as $results)
{
   echo $results["widget_name"];
}

However if I want to do something like this:

foreach ($database->query("SELECT * FROM widgets WHERE something='something else'") as $results)
{
   echo $results["widget_name"];
}

Obviously the 'something else' will be dynamic.


Solution

  • Here is an example for using PDO to connect to a DB, to tell it to throw Exceptions instead of php errors (will help with your debugging), and using parameterised statements instead of substituting dynamic values into the query yourself (highly recommended):

    // connect to PDO
    $pdo = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=test", "user", "password");
    
    // the following tells PDO we want it to throw Exceptions for every error.
    // this is far more useful than the default mode of throwing php errors
    $pdo->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
    
    // prepare the statement. the placeholders allow PDO to handle substituting
    // the values, which also prevents SQL injection
    $stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM product WHERE productTypeId=:productTypeId AND brand=:brand");
    
    // bind the parameters
    $stmt->bindValue(":productTypeId", 6);
    $stmt->bindValue(":brand", "Slurm");
    
    // initialise an array for the results
    $products = array();
    $stmt->execute();
    while ($row = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
        $products[] = $row;
    }