PHP MySQL Select

The SELECT statement is used to select data from a database.

Syntax

SELECT column_name(s)

FROM table_name

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

To get PHP to execute the statement above we must use the mysql_query() function. This function is used to send a query or command to a MySQL connection.

Example

The following example selects all the data stored in the "Persons" table (The * character selects all the data in the table):

<?php

$con = mysql_connect("localhost","peter","abc123");

if (!$con)

{

die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());

}

mysql_select_db("my_db", $con);

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM Persons");

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))

{

echo $row['FirstName'] . " " . $row['LastName'];

echo "<br />";

}

mysql_close($con);

?>

The example above stores the data returned by the mysql_query() function in the $result variable.

Next, we use the mysql_fetch_array() function to return the first row from the recordset as an array. Each call to mysql_fetch_array() returns the next row in the recordset. The while loop loops through all the records in the recordset. To print the value of each row, we use the PHP $row variable ($row['FirstName'] and $row['LastName']).

The output of the code above will be:

Peter Griffin

Glenn Quagmire
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Display the Result in an HTML Table

The following example selects the same data as the example above, but will display the data in an HTML table:

<?php

$con = mysql_connect("localhost","peter","abc123");

if (!$con)

{

die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());

}

mysql_select_db("my_db", $con);

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM Persons");

echo "<table border='1'>

<tr>

<th>Firstname</th>

<th>Lastname</th>

</tr>";

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))

{

echo "<tr>";

echo "<td>" . $row['FirstName'] . "</td>";

echo "<td>" . $row['LastName'] . "</td>";

echo "</tr>";

}

echo "</table>";

mysql_close($con);

?>

The output of the code above will be:




Firstname        Lastname

Glenn                Quagmire

Peter                 Griffin