Select Data From a Database Table
The SELECT statement is used to select data from a database.
Syntax
FROM table_name
To get PHP to execute the statement above we must use the mysqli_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):
$con=mysqli_connect(“example.com”,”peter”,”abc123″,”my_db”);
// Check connection
if (mysqli_connect_errno())
{
echo “Failed to connect to MySQL: ” . mysqli_connect_error();
}
$result = mysqli_query($con,”SELECT * FROM Persons”);
while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result))
{
echo $row[‘FirstName’] . ” ” . $row[‘LastName’];
echo “<br>”;
}
mysqli_close($con);
?>
The example above stores the data returned by the mysqli_query() function in the $result variable.
Next, we use the mysqli_fetch_array() function to return the first row from the recordset as an array. Each call to mysqli_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:
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:
$con=mysqli_connect(“example.com”,”peter”,”abc123″,”my_db”);
// Check connection
if (mysqli_connect_errno())
{
echo “Failed to connect to MySQL: ” . mysqli_connect_error();
}
$result = mysqli_query($con,”SELECT * FROM Persons”);
echo “<table border=’1′>
<tr>
<th>Firstname</th>
<th>Lastname</th>
</tr>”;
while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result))
{
echo “<tr>”;
echo “<td>” . $row[‘FirstName’] . “</td>”;
echo “<td>” . $row[‘LastName’] . “</td>”;
echo “</tr>”;
}
echo “</table>”;
mysqli_close($con);
?>
The output of the code above will be:
| Firstname | Lastname |
|---|---|
| Glenn | Quagmire |
| Peter | Griffin |
