Share
Query Explanation
Below is a step-by-step walkthrough of the code.
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM example")
When you perform a SELECT query on the database it will return a MySQL Resource that holds everything from your MySQL table, "example". We want to use this Resource in our PHP code, so we need to store it in a variable, $result.
SELECT * FROM example
Yes, this is a partial repeat of the same line of code, but we wanted to explain this MySQL statement in greater detail again!
In English, this line of code reads "Select every entry from the table example". The asterisk is the wild card in MySQL which just tells MySQL to include every single column for that table.
$row = mysql_fetch_array( $result );
$result is now a MySQL Resource containing data from your MySQL table, "example". Data is being stored in $result, but it is not yet visible to visitors of your website. When we pass $result into the mysql_fetch_array function -- mysql_fetch_array($result) -- an associative array (name, age) is returned.
In our MySQL table "example," there are only two fields that we care about: name and age. These names are the keys to extracting the data from our associative array. To get the name we use $row['name'] and to get the age we use $row['age'].
PHP is case sensitive when you reference MySQL column names, so be sure to use capitalization in your PHP code that matches the MySQL column names!
