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PHP Integrating PHP with Databases Querying the Database with PHP Working with Query Results

Mark Miller
Mark Miller
45,831 Points

What format is returned by our PDO object, $results, before using any methods? Because fetchAll() makes an array...

It seems that fetchAll() is not performing any function. Didn't the query return an array? Why do we need to fetch that after it was already returned and stored in $results?

Mark Miller
Mark Miller
45,831 Points

The documentation for the PDOStatement Class explains that it returns a readonly string, and that answers my question. That may also explain what "Extract, Transform, and Load" is all about. The network transmission (database connection between client and server) apparently only sends readonly string data, so it has to be transformed into a useful format and then it can be loaded. So, I'm not seeking an answer anymore. I reviewed the videos and read the PHP manual, so now I understand. It's Interesting that this class implements "Traversable."