Article Discussion: PHP and Databases for the Lazy Sod

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I don't understand what this code does:What does the foreach ( $users as $user ) do? Are those just variables I make up?

Thanks,
-Corbb

WebGuy: I am not a PHP programmer but this is a common technique in quite a lot of languages.

I'll try to explain.

The variable $users contains a collection of users as a recordset/array that was retrieved from $db->get_results.
What the foreach statement is iterate each of the users in $users and on each loop it assigns the current user (from $users) to $user so it can be accessed easily.

I hope I explained that well.

Hi,

I will try and explain this bit by bit.

$users = $db->get_results("SELECT * FROM users");
This line explained.. bit by bit....

$db->get_results
a function that gets results from the database

SELECT * FROM users
the query issued to the database

$users =
create a new array called $users and put any values from $db->get_results into it

-------

foreach ( $users as $user )
{
echo $user->name;
}


And now this bit explained bit by bit...

foreach ( $users
take the array that we just created step through it.

as $user )
within the brackets we can get a handle on the data by using the name specifed here. Here is the same thing with names that are easier to understand..

foreach ( $bit_of_this_array as $one_row )
{
echo $one_row;
}

it is the same as doing....

for ( $i=0; $my_array[$i] != NULL; $i++ )
{
echo $my_array[$i];
}

but it is easier..

Cheers,
Justin

What is the way for error checking in ezSql query?

For example, using native mysql we have:

$sql = "UPDATE articles SET .... WHERE id=$id";

if ( mysql_query($sql) ) {
echo("<h1>Data succesfully changed</h1>");
} else {
echo("<P>Error...: " . mysql_error() . "</P>");
}
-----
With ezSql:

if ($db->query($sql) ) {....

doesn't work;


Then I tried:

$db->query($sql);

if ( !$EZSQL_ERROR ) {
echo("<h1>Data succesfully changed</h1>");
}else {
echo("<P>Error...</P>");
$db->vardump($EZSQL_ERROR);
}

and this work!

Any suggestion welcome.

Ezudin,

Good point.

I have updated ezSQL so that it now does
as you have suggested. Please get the latest version
from http://php.justinvincent.com

Cheers,
Justin

First off, I love being a lazy sod with this kind of code. Awesome.

Although I have done some work in PHP and MySQL, I don't quite understand why I can't use a statement like this:


$user = $db->get_row("SELECT * FROM subscribers WHERE subscriber_uid = '$uid' AND subscriber_pwd = password('$pwd')");


As long as I use one WHERE condition at a time, I'm fine and everything works.

I also saw the user name/password example, but that wouldn't work for me, since the passwords are encrypted using MySQL's "password" function.

Additionally, I have tried get_results, but that didn't seem to work either.

Any ideas? Anyone?

Using PHP 4.1.2 on a remote host (Zeus server software) and there doesn't seem to be anything odd about the configuration (as per phpinfo). EZSQL is fine on queries where the database is modified, insert and update, and no result displayed. However, with the examples given, none of those where results were to be displayed, worked. All produced a parse error message citing the line where echo() is called or other function requiring results to be displayed.
I set up a table "users" in mysql with 3 fields for id, name and email. The scripts were simply the include ezsql line and the code given. I'm sure I'm missing something very simple. But am too simple to know what it is. Any help on this much appreciated.

ezSQL is a really good class.
But is it possible to show all DEBUG-Outputs in a "Popup"-window ?