Using an SQL result in a foreach loop

Question

I feel like I am missing something stupidly obvious here, I am trying to get the results of an SQL query and then using them in a loop. I feel like I am missing something stupidly obvious, I have tried it with and without the commented out line.

<?php
$sentToID = $_SESSION['userID'];

$query = "SELECT *
          FROM messages
          WHERE sentToID = '$sentToID'";

$results = mysql_query($query);
//$userData = mysql_fetch_array($results, MYSQL_ASSOC);

foreach ($results as $result){
    $messageID = $result['messageID'];
    $sentFromID = $result['sentFromID'];
    $subject = $result['subject'];
    $body = $result['body'];
    $dateTime = $result['dateTime'];

    $query = "SELECT usertype 
              FROM user
              WHERE userID = '$sentFromID'";
    $messageResult = mysql_query($query);
    $messageData = mysql_fetch_array($messageResult, MYSQL_ASSOC);

    $usertype = $messageData['usertype'];

    $query = "SELECT * 
              FROM $usertype
              WHERE userID = '$sentFromID'";

    $messageResult = mysql_query($query);
    $messageData = mysql_fetch_array($messageResult, MYSQL_ASSOC);

    if ($usertype == "jobseeker"){
        $forname = $messageData['forename'];
        $surname = $messageData['surname'];
        echo "<div><p>" . $forename . " " . $surname . "</p>
              <p>Subject: " . $subject ."</p>
              <p>Body: " . $body . "</p></div>";
    }
    if ($usertype == "employer"){
        $forname = $messageData['forename'];
        $surname = $messageData['surname'];
        $companyName = $messageData['companyName'];

        echo "<div><p>" . $forename . " " . $surname . " - " . $companyName . "</p>
              <p>Subject: " . $subject ."</p>
              <p>Body: " . $body . "</p></div>";
    }
}
?>

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Solution 1

You must first fetch your results into an array. Looks like you started to do this but commented it out.

$results = mysql_query($query);
//$userData = mysql_fetch_array($results, MYSQL_ASSOC);

$resultset = array();
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($results)) {
  $resultset[] = $row;
}

// $resultset now holds all rows from the first query.
foreach ($resultset as $result){
 //... etc...

Solution 2

Instead of your foreach(), you should do something like this (see the mysql_query() manual page for more):

while($result = mysql_fetch_assoc($results)) {
    // your code
}

Solution 3

another option

$num_rows = mysql_num_rows($result)
for ($i=0;$i<$num_rows;$i++) {
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)
$messageID = $row['messageID'];
}

You can do anything from here.

Remember, 1- query into object like $result 2- fetch row at a time from the object into an array which reflects an entire row in the table given your query definition with associative keys or numeric 3- do something with the array

You will loop through the object row by row and put in $row as an array.

Cheers

Solution 4

I don't have the reputation to comment, and the above answers are correct, but the php mysql_query() manual page says that

this extension was deprecated in PHP 5.5.0, and it was removed in PHP 7.0.0. Instead, the MySQLi or PDO_MySQL extension should be used

So now a correct way would be:

while($result = mysqli_fetch_assoc($results)) {
    // your code
}

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