PHP Select Data From MySQL

Select Data From a MySQL Database

The SELECT statement is used to select data from one or more tables:

or we can use the * character to select ALL columns from a table:

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

Select Data With MySQLi

The following example selects the id, firstname and lastname columns from the MyGuests table and displays it on the page:

connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
} 

$sql = "SELECT id, firstname, lastname FROM MyGuests";
$result = $conn->query($sql);

if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
    // output data of each row
    while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
        echo "id: " . $row["id"]. " - Name: " . $row["firstname"]. " " . $row["lastname"]. "
";
    }
} else {
    echo "0 results";
}
$conn->close();
?>

Code lines to explain from the example above:

First, we set up an SQL query that selects the id, firstname and lastname columns from the MyGuests table. The next line of code runs the query and puts the resulting data into a variable called $result.

Then, the function num_rows() checks if there are more than zero rows returned.

If there are more than zero rows returned, the function fetch_assoc() puts all the results into an associative array that we can loop through. The while() loop loops through the result set and outputs the data from the id, firstname and lastname columns.

The following example shows the same as the example above, in the MySQLi procedural way:

 0) {
    // output data of each row
    while($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
        echo "id: " . $row["id"]. " - Name: " . $row["firstname"]. " " . $row["lastname"]. "
";
    }
} else {
    echo "0 results";
}

mysqli_close($conn);
?>

You can also put the result in an HTML table:

connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
} 

$sql = "SELECT id, firstname, lastname FROM MyGuests";
$result = $conn->query($sql);

if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
    echo "";
    // output data of each row
    while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
        echo "";
    }
    echo "
ID
Name
".$row["id"]."
".$row["firstname"]." ".$row["lastname"]."
";
} else {
    echo "0 results";
}
$conn->close();
?>

Select Data With PDO (+ Prepared Statements)

The following example uses prepared statements.

It selects the id, firstname and lastname columns from the MyGuests table and displays it in an HTML table:

";
echo "IdFirstnameLastname";

class TableRows extends RecursiveIteratorIterator { 
    function __construct($it) { 
        parent::__construct($it, self::LEAVES_ONLY); 
    }

    function current() {
        return "" . parent::current(). "";
    }

    function beginChildren() { 
        echo ""; 
    } 

    function endChildren() { 
        echo "" . "\n";
    } 
} 

$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "myDBPDO";

try {
    $conn = new PDO("mysql:host=$servername;dbname=$dbname", $username, $password);
    $conn->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
    $stmt = $conn->prepare("SELECT id, firstname, lastname FROM MyGuests"); 
    $stmt->execute();

    // set the resulting array to associative
    $result = $stmt->setFetchMode(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC); 
    foreach(new TableRows(new RecursiveArrayIterator($stmt->fetchAll())) as $k=>$v) { 
        echo $v;
    }
}
catch(PDOException $e) {
    echo "Error: " . $e->getMessage();
}
$conn = null;
echo "";
?>