[RESOLVED] retrieving column names from previous query

[knucklehead]

Hello.
I am trying to create XML file with some user informations. Since I am retrieving user information from 2 tables first I need to run some query to get all data.
Let's say this is my query:

$q = "SELECT * FROM table1,table2 WHERE table1.field1 = '$something' AND table1.field2 = table2.field1";
$result = mysql_query($q);

After that I construct XML tags in this way:

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)){
	$xml = "<user>\n\t";
	$xml .= "<id>".$row['id']."</id>\n\t";
	$xml .= "<username>".$row['username']."</username>\n\t";
	$xml .= "<userlevel>".$row['userlevel']."</userlevel>\n\t";
	$xml .= "<email>".$row['email']."</email>\n\t";
	// etc.
	$xml .= "</user>\n";
}

print ($xml);

In case that my query produces lots of details I would have to write manually each tag for my XML. But if I use same names for my XML tags as columns in my sql table i could probably do something like this:

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)){
	$xml = "<user>\n\t";
	$xml .= "<".$column_name.">".$row['.$column_name.']."</".$column_name.">\n\t";
	$xml .= "</user>\n";
}

print ($xml);

What I would like to ask is:

• how to retrieve column names from my query?
• how to add $column_name variable to my $row[] array? is this enough: ${"row[$column_name]"}
• since my query will probably have duplicate column names, how to avoid them?

Thanks for your help!

[NogDog]

You could use mysql_fetch_assoc() and a foreach() loop:

while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
{
   $xml .= "<user>\n";
   foreach($row as $col => $val)
   {
      $xml .= "\t<$col>$val</$col>\n";
   }
   $xml .= "</user>\n";
}

[knucklehead]

NogDog;10907189 wrote:

You could use mysql_fetch_assoc() and a foreach() loop:

while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
{
   $xml .= "<user>\n";
   foreach($row as $col => $val)
   {
      $xml .= "\t<$col>$val</$col>\n";
   }
   $xml .= "</user>\n";
}

EXACTLY! =)
Many many thanks for quick help.