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PHP

Łukasz Czuliński
Łukasz Czuliński
8,646 Points
Posted by Łukasz Czuliński
Łukasz Czuliński
8,646 Points

$row variable. Not sure what it is.

So I'm learning MySQL and came across the $row variable. I'm unclear what it is and cannot find a clear definition after searching online.

I was following along in W3School's tutorial. Here's the code:

<?php
$con=mysqli_connect("example.com","peter","abc123","my_db");
// Check connection
if (mysqli_connect_errno()) {
  echo "Failed to connect to MySQL: " . mysqli_connect_error();
}

$result = mysqli_query($con,"SELECT * FROM Persons");

while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result)) {
  echo $row['FirstName'] . " " . $row['LastName'];
  echo "<br>";
}

mysqli_close($con);
?>

$row was not defined anywhere in the code and the documentation's only reference to it was: 'To print the value of each row, we use the PHP $row variable ($row['FirstName'] and $row['LastName']).'

How is it actually declared?

3 Answers

Kristian Terziev
Kristian Terziev
28,449 Points

Hello,

It is declared here:

while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result))

Is is declared and then using one = not two (two are for compare) it gets the value returned from mysqli_fetch_array($result) function. And this function returns an array. That's why $row is then used as array: $row['FirstName'] and the id of this array is defined as table row in a database.

Kristian Terziev
Kristian Terziev
28,449 Points
Kristian Terziev
Kristian Terziev
28,449 Points

Hello,

It is declared here:

while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result))

Is is declared and then using one = not two (two are for compare) it gets the value returned from mysqli_fetch_array($result) function. And this function returns an array. That's why $row is then used as array: $row['FirstName'] and the id of this array is defined as table row in a database.

Łukasz Czuliński
Łukasz Czuliński
8,646 Points
Łukasz Czuliński
Łukasz Czuliński
8,646 Points

Wow...facepalm. I can't believe I missed that. I'm a PHP noob and not used to not having the var ____ =

Mersi mnogo!