arrays?? Help with foreach

benf posted this at 12:08 — 3rd August 2007.

Joined: Feb 2005

Well ive just started delving into the world of OOP with php. Its going great but im having trouble using the arrays.

This is the problem: I have a database class and within it the methods are as follows

query method
database connection method
fetchArray method

im having trouble with the fetch array method. for example:

<?php
$test = new database();

$query = $test->query(\"select * from table);
while($fetch = $test->fetcharray($query)){
    ........stuff...this works, $fetch[1]...etc;
}
?>

however, i wanted to create a function that will return some data that can be reused.

<?php
 function test(){
    $test = new database();
    $query = $test->query(\"select * from table);

    while($fetch = $test->fetcharray($query)){
         return $fetch;
     }
}
?>

this returns hopefully the whole array of stuff from the database and im trying to use a foreach loop so that i can extract which ever data i want and display in whatever way i want.

<?php
include(\"functions.php\");

$test = test();

foreach($test as $tests){
   echo \"<a href=\\"$tests[0]\\">$tests[1]</a>\";
}
?>

but this doesnt work it is only out putting the first row in the database not all rows?

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JeevesBond posted this at 17:36 — 3rd August 2007.

He has: 3,956 posts

Joined: Jun 2002

This is the problem:

<?php
return $fetch;
?>

return means: stop whatever you're doing and return a result. This code will only ever reach the first row. I would advise against building an array containing the entire resultset of a query, you'll probably get out of memory errors in PHP. Generally it's better to keep the resultset with the database server and request one line of the result at a time, much more efficient! If you really need to do it that way though, try:

<?php
function test() { 
  $test = new database(); 
  $query = $test->query(\"SELECT * FROM table\"); 

  while ($fetch = $test->fetcharray($query)) { 
    $all_fetches[] = $fetch;
  }
  return $all_fetches; 
}
?>

It's certainly desirable to abstract database connectivity though, particularly if you're planning on supporting multiple database backends (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL Server etc.) so your idea is a good one.

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