How can I put the results of a MySQLi prepared statement into an associative array?

Question

I have a sql query and a mysqli prepared statement:

$sql = 'SELECT photographers.photographer_id, photographers.photographer_name
    FROM photographers';

$stmt = $conn->stmt_init(); 
if ($stmt->prepare($sql)) { 
    $stmt->bind_result($photographer_id, $photographer_name);  
    $OK = $stmt->execute(); 
    $stmt->fetch();
}

How can I store the results in an associative array so I can loop it later and get to all the data returned by the sql string?

Answer 1

Try the following:

$meta = $statement->result_metadata(); 

while ($field = $meta->fetch_field()) { 
    $params[] = &$row[$field->name]; 
} 

call_user_func_array(array($statement, 'bind_result'), $params);            
while ($statement->fetch()) { 
    foreach($row as $key => $val) { 
        $c[$key] = $val; 
    } 
    $hits[] = $c; 
} 
$statement->close(); 

First you get the query metadata and from that obtain all the fields you've fetched (you could do this manually, but this code works for all queries rather than building by hand). The call_user_func_array() function calls the mysqli_stmt::bind_result() function for you on each of those parameters.

After that it is just a matter of running through each row and creating an associative array for each row and adding that to an array resulting in all the results.