PHP & MySQL - Echo a List of Strings

Question

Hello everyone,

I am kind of stumped on the idea of echoing a list of strings from a mysql server. How would the process go? The format I want it to be is like this:

Name 1
Name 2
Name 3
Name 4

However each new name is in a new cell, and I don't know how to gather every single name from the mysql server. PHP is a very new language for me so please go easy :)

Answer 1

Query the table and then loop through the resulting array, this example is assuming the column name is "name"

$query = “SELECT * FROM table”;
$showresult = mysql_query($query);

while($results_array = mysql_fetch_assoc($showresult))
{
  echo "Name ".$results_array["name"];
}

Answer 2

There are at least three extension modules that provide access to a MySQL server: the old php-mysql module, the MySQL improved module and PDO with its MyQL driver. Pete has given you an example of the "old" mysql module. Let me show you an example using pdo and (server-side) prepared statements:

<?php
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=test', 'localonly', 'localonly');
$pdo->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
setupTestdata($pdo);

$stmt = $pdo->prepare('SELECT foo FROM soTest WHERE id<?');
$stmt->execute( array(3) );
while( false!==($row=$stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) ) {
  echo $row['foo'], "\n";
}

echo "same statement again, different parameter:\n";
$stmt->execute( array(5) );
while( false!==($row=$stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) ) {
  echo $row['foo'], "\n";
}

function setupTestdata($pdo) {
  $pdo->query('CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE soTest (id int auto_increment, foo varchar(16), primary key(id))');
  $pdo->query("INSERT INTO soTest (foo) VALUES ('nameA'), ('nameB'), ('nameC'), ('nameD'), ('nameE')");
}

prints

nameA
nameB
same statement again, different parameter:
nameA
nameB
nameC
nameD