Delete Data From a MySQL Table Using MySQLi and PDO

The DELETE statement is used to delete records from a table:

DELETE FROM table_name
WHERE some_column = some_value

Notice the WHERE clause in the DELETE syntax: The WHERE clause specifies which record or records that should be deleted. If you omit the WHERE clause, all records will be deleted!

To learn more about SQL, please visit our SQL tutorial.

Let’s look at the “MyGuests” table:

id firstname lastname email reg_date
1 John Doe john@example.com 2014-10-22 14:26:15
2 Mary Moe mary@example.com 2014-10-23 10:22:30
3 Julie Dooley julie@example.com 2014-10-26 10:48:23

The following examples delete the record with id=3 in the “MyGuests” table:

Example (MySQLi Object-oriented)

Example (MySQLi Procedural)

Example (PDO)

setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);

    // sql to delete a record
    $sql = "DELETE FROM MyGuests WHERE id=3";

    // use exec() because no results are returned
    $conn->exec($sql);
    echo "Record deleted successfully";
    }
catch(PDOException $e)
    {
    echo $sql . "
" . $e->getMessage();
    }

$conn = null;
?>

After the record is deleted, the table will look like this:

id firstname lastname email reg_date
1 John Doe john@example.com 2014-10-22 14:26:15
2 Mary Moe mary@example.com 2014-10-23 10:22:30