[RESOLVED] $variable = $row['FieldName'];

jkarr

Hello,

I need to asign field name to a variable. Does anyone know how to do that?

Example:

function totalAttendance($num){
 $presentnum = "Present".$num;
 $query=mysql_query("SELECT.......") or die(mysql_error());
 $row = mysql_fetch_array($query);
 $present1 = $row['$presentnum'];

}

The problem with just pulling all the records is that there are 20 of them and this query is done up to 15 times with the values added together. That's a lot of if statements.

Thanks,
Johnie Karr

laserlight

I need to asign field name to a variable.

What do you mean by that?

jheitz

You are already assigning a field name to a variable. However, if your query is returning several results that need to be added together, and this can be done with a while loop in PHP, you're better off changing the select statement to a SELECT SUM(X) WHERE....

Take a look at a basic SQL manual for more info...

jkarr

The problem is with this line:

$present1 = $row['$presentnum'];

Normally this would be:

$present1 = $row['presentnum'];

Notice the difference is that in the first line presentnum is a variable and in the second line presentnum is the actual field name. I need it to be the variable, but this method doesn't work.

Sorry for my delayed response, I was out of town and for some reason I didn't get an e-mail reply from this thread :S

Thanks again,
Johnie Karr

bradgrafelman

jkarr wrote:
Notice the difference is that in the first line presentnum is a variable

No it's not. It's a string of text that begins with a dollar sign.

Read this man page ([man]language.types.string[/man]) and you'll see that PHP does not pase single quoted strings for variables -- only double quoted (okay, heredoc as well if you use braces).

Then again, if you're passing a variable for the array index, why are you trying to make it a string in the first place?

$present1 = $row[$presentnum];