fetch thing

[Anon]

ok, I don't if this should go here or not but it's here now

how would I do this: say I have a relatively large database with all the people I know in it, and it has there info like b-day, gender, etc. I want to find all the info on my friend Jim, and have it echo() onto a page. What's the best way to do it? I know there's something like mysql_fetch_row or something, but I don't understand the explanation in the manual very much.

[bretticus]

Welcome to Web Dev 101! ;-)

In a great big nutshell, you need to have access to a database server local or remote. This means you most likely need to have the ip, username, an password. I'm assuming you do and it's MySQL???

1. Connect to the database.

<?php
$link = mysql_connect("localhost", "mysql_user", "mysql_password")
or die("Could not connect");
print ("Connected successfully");?>

2. query the database:

$result = mysql_db_query ( "friends", )

[bretticus]

whoops...hit that darned Submit button a bit too early...

2. Query the database a get back the result:

$result = mysql_db_query ( "associates", "SELECT * FROM friends WHERE name = 'John'");

3. Take the result and return the row(s) as an array.

I assume you'll be returning one row since we placed a condition to grab the row with name = 'John', so...

$row = mysql_fetch_array ($result);
echo $row["name"];

Or if you return mulitple rows:

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array ($result)😉{
echo $row["name"];
}

My suggestions, play with it and read the manual until it makes sense. I taught myself PHP in a week basically by approaching it like, "I want to do this." And following through till it worked ;-)

Good luck!

[bretticus]

man, I'm careless tonight:

in...

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array ($result)😉{
echo $row["name"];
}

I need to take out a ";":

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array ($result)){
echo $row["name"];
}