Resource ID#'s coming back

[Anon]

I'm having problems pulling variables from my mySQL database... I can do straight databases queries (SELECT author FROM news WHERE post_number = 1), but when I try to do it in my PHP script ($author = mysql_query("SELECT author FROM news WHERE post_number='$counter'", $connection) (and yes, I did a select_db before this) I get something to the extent of "Resource ID# X" where X is some variable... echo "$author"; would return a resource ID#... I have no idea what's going on. Thanks for any help.

[Anon]

this should help

$results = mysql_query("SELECT author FROM news WHERE post_number='$counter'", $connection);

if ($results || die("Bad Query".mysql_error()){

    //were any results returned?
 if (mysql_num_rows($results) || die('No Results Returned")){

    //get the data from the resource ID and put it in an associative array
     while($row = mysql_fetch_array($results,MYSQL_ASSOC)){
             $Author[] = $row['author'];
     }

 }

}

You do not have to use the die() statements, the main thing in the above code is how to retrieve the results.
Now you can access the data in $Author with

if (is_array($Author)){
echo $Author[0];
}

or if more than 1 record will be returned

if (is_array($Author)){
foreach($Author as $value){
echo $value.'<BR>';
}
}

[killswytch]

To extract the information from your variable, you need to do the following:

while ($authorResults = mysql_fetch_array($author))
{

[Anon]

OK, I knew it was possible with arrays, but for my purposes it's much easier to do it with a single variable, is there any way to grab one at a time? And thanks for the help, tek and spar.

[Anon]

Oops, I shot myself in the foot. Thanks for the help, I have that working, now for the array. Is there any way to make the first one "1" instead of the default "0"? Once again, thanks for puttin' up with the "n00b"

[[deleted]]

No. arrays allways start with element zero.
In your programming this should not be a problem because the index in the array never gets displayed anywhere. Only the value is printed.

[Anon]

I know that only the value is displayed, I'm not THAT stupid... but I'm using this to select from a dropdown menu with a selection for each news post. I do a query to find the number of entries, then have a counter count them down. The only thing is, that counter starts on the largest post number, then counts down to one. Problem is, the array wants to start at zero so everything is one behind. I COULD just have the counter set to >= 0, but then I have a blank area to edit a post zero, which doesn't exist. I guess that's just a temporary solution, and if there's no other way to do it, that'll work, but does anyone know a way? I'm pretty sure that there was a way to define what number the array started on... maybe I'm mixing up C++ arrays and PHP arrays... anyone know? Once again, thanks.

[[deleted]]

What I meant by the fact that it is never dispayed is that you can do anything to the index number.

If the array goes from index 0 to 9, you have 10 elements, just like you have 10 elements when the index goes from 1-10
The only thing you have to do is subtract one from the index when you are referencing the array.

If you still feel this is an unacceptable thing, you can fill the first element of the array with junk-data and proceed to skip index zero:

$Author = array();
$Author[0]=''; // fill index zero
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($results,MYSQL_ASSOC)){
$Author[] = $row['author']; // fill next index (1,2,3,...)
}