$result = Resouce id #3

[Anon]

hi.

i'm fairly new to php, so please forgive me if the answer to the following question is obvious. at any rate, onto my problem:

i am creating a searchable FAQ database, the specific part i am having problems with is when looking for the keyword. this is what i have:

$query = "select * from faq where question like '%$keyword%'";
$result = mysql_query($query);

if ($result) {
blah blah blah
} else {
blah blah.
}

that works all fine and dandy when it finds the keyword. however, if it doesn't find the keyword $result takes "Resource id #3" as it's value. so if ($result) thinks it's actually getting something of substance and takes it instead of passing it along to else, and i get a blank page because the other statements were not 'fulfilled' to their liking, as opposed to echoing that it has found no match for $keyword.

any help would be appreciated.

[[deleted]]

Indeed, the answer is obvious.

Read the manual:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-query.php

mysql_query returns a result-identifier,not a result.
You need to use functions like mysql_fetch_array($result)
to get the actual rows from the table.

[Anon]

i figured it out. yay.

instead of:

if ($result) {

i used:

if (mysql_num_rows($result) > 0) {

go me.

anjeela wrote:

hi.

i'm fairly new to php, so please forgive me if the answer to the following question is obvious. at any rate, onto my problem:

i am creating a searchable FAQ database, the specific part i am having problems with is when looking for the keyword. this is what i have:

$query = "select * from faq where question like '%$keyword%'";
$result = mysql_query($query);

if ($result) {
blah blah blah
} else {
blah blah.
}

that works all fine and dandy when it finds the keyword. however, if it doesn't find the keyword $result takes "Resource id #3" as it's value. so if ($result) thinks it's actually getting something of substance and takes it instead of passing it along to else, and i get a blank page because the other statements were not 'fulfilled' to their liking, as opposed to echoing that it has found no match for $keyword.

any help would be appreciated.

[Anon]

yes, however the line directly under my if statement was:

while ($r = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {

... so if i used the if with that, the first result returned was omitted, because i cannot take that line off of the while statement.

at any rate. thanks. :-)