Displaying an associative array in PHP

Question

I am trying to build a function that extracts information from a database and inserts it into an associative array in PHP using mysql_fetch_assoc, and return the array so another function can display it. I need a way to display the returned assoc array. This should be a different function from the first one

Answer 1

This should get you going:

$rows = mysql_query("select * from whatever");
if ($rows) {
   while ($record = mysql_fetch_array($rows)) {
       echo $record["column1"];
       echo $record["column2"];
       // or you could just var_dump($record); to see what came back...
   }
}

Answer 2

print_r($array) will give nicely formatted (textually, not html) output.

Answer 3

The following should work:

$rows = mysql_query("select * from whatever");
if ($rows) {
    $header = true;
    while ($record = mysql_fetch_assoc($rows)) {
        if ($header) {
            echo '<tr>';
            foreach (array_keys($record) AS $col) {
                echo '<td>'.htmlspecialchars($col).'</td>';
            }
            echo '</tr>';
            $header = false;
        }
        echo '<tr>';
        foreach (array_values($record) AS $col) {
            echo '<td>'.htmlspecialchars($col).'</td>';
        }
        echo '</tr>';
    }
}

(Yes, blatant mod of Fosco's code)

This should print the column headers once, then the contents after that. This would print just whatever columns were retrieved from the DB, regardless of the query.

Answer 4

If you just want information about what is in the array (for debugging purposes), you can use print_r($array) or var_dump($array), or var_export($array) to print it in PHP's array format.

If you want nicely formatted output, you might want to do something like:

<table border="1">
  <?php
  foreach($array as $name => $value) {
    echo "<tr><th>".htmlspecialchars($name).
        "</th><td>".htmlspecialchars($value)."</th></tr>";
  }
  ?>
</table>

This will, as you might already see, print a nicely formatted table with the names in the left column and the values in the right column.

Answer 5

while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    foreach ($row as $column => $value) {
        //Column name is in $column, value in $value
        //do displaying here
    }
}

If this is a new program, consider using the mysqli extension instead.

Answer 6

Assuming you've made the call, and got $result back:

$array = new array();
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
  $array[] = $row;
}
return $array;