asked on

using PHP and MySQL to build a web query

I have been staring at this for far too long to admit, but I am stumped. I am a newbie to PHP and MySQL but have a relatively good grasp on SQL, so I would like to think I know what I am doing here. Unfortunately, results prove different.

I have built a simple form to submit information into a very simple MySQL dbase - will expand it later when the client firms up the requirements. The submission part works.

Now to pull the results. I can get a simple 'SELECT * FROM table' to work, but when I try to insert a WHERE parameter, I get a syntax error.

Here is the code on the page:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Dynamic Menu</title>
</head>

<body>

<?
// Make a MySQL Connection
include("dbinfo.inc.php");
mysql_connect(localhost,$username,$password);
@mysql_select_db($database) or die( "Unable to select database");

// Retrieve all the data from the "example" table
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM test1 WHERE show = '1'")
or die(mysql_error());

// store the record of the "example" table into $row
$row = mysql_fetch_array( $result );
// Print out the contents of the entry

while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
{
echo "Title :{$row['title']} " .
"Description : {$row['description']} " .
"Price : {$row['price']} ";
}

?>

</body>
</html>

Like I said - this works fine until I add the 'WHERE show = '1'.

My thinking is the show field in the dbase table is a bit flag - true or false - that indicates if a particular entry should be visible or not. I have tried setting the field type to tinyint (1 or 0), varchar (1 or 0), or boolean. I have tried permutations of 'show is 1', 'show is true', 'show > 0' and 'show = '1' '.

I hate to say how much time I have spent on this one particular piece - it is killing me. As near as I can tell, the PHP/MYSQL dbase does not have bit value, so should I be using tinyint? VARCHAR? What is the syntax to successfully query against it?

Thanks in advance!

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

jayarjo

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jayarjo

our filed = your fields :D

damn typos...

SOLUTION

Kruger_monkey

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chipsterva69

ASKER

okay - the error is gone! thanks a million!

follow-up though - when I run the query against '0' in the now-named isVisible field, it shows everything listed with the 0 value. I use '1' and the one item with that value does not show up. is this a related problem? The isVisible field is a tinyint, with values of 1 or 0.

SOLUTION

jayarjo

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chipsterva69

ASKER

kruger_monkey - that sounds like the problem I just came followed up with - an expected return of one item isn't showing. How do I avoid the problem?

Kruger_monkey

Drop the first $row= and only use the while $row option.

Caught me out a few times.

$row = mysql_fetch_association($query) This line will take the first row and assign it here, so drop this.

Only use

while($row......) you will get the first line back again. Basically the following should work, I believe.

// store the record of the "example" table into $row
//$row = mysql_fetch_array( $result ); -- either comment out or remove this line.
// Print out the contents of the entry

while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
{
echo "Title :{$row['title']} " .
"Description : {$row['description']} " .
"Price : {$row['price']} ";
}

chipsterva69

ASKER

kruger_monkey - thanks! that is just what I did. works like a charm. thanks a million for the help!