How do I loop through MySQL results easily?

Question

I've been requesting MySQL results and looping through them like this:

$query = "SELECT * FROM $table";
$result = mysql_query($query);
for($i = 0; $i < mysql_num_rows($result); $i++){
    echo mysql_result($result, $i, $row);
    //do something else;
}

you can probably see what happens. What if a row has been deleted? What if the first item is gone? In that case, there could be 30 items in the list, but the last items index is at position 50. How do I fix this or what other systems can I use?

Answer 1

while($temp = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
{
     echo $temp['id']; // ID Column
}

But BTW. The mysql_num_rows returns the number of rows you fetched. If you have a row that was deleted, it wouldn't have been fetched, and therefore it wouldn't count towards the number.

Answer 2

Also - I believe the entire rowset is obtained at query time, rows deleted after the query is executed will still appear in your results.