PHP MySQL Select

The SELECT statement is used to select data from a database.

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Select Data From a Database Table

The SELECT statement is used to select data from a database.

Syntax

SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table_name

To learn more about SQL, please visit our SQL tutorial.
To get PHP to execute the statement above we must use the mysql_query() function. This function is used to send a query or command to a MySQL connection.

Example

The following example selects all the data stored in the "Persons" table (The * character selects all the data in the table):

<?php
$con = mysql_connect("localhost","peter","abc123");
if (!$con)
  {
  die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
  }

mysql_select_db("my_db", $con);

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM Persons");

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

mysql_close($con);
?>

The example above stores the data returned by the mysql_query() function in the $result variable.
Next, we use the mysql_fetch_array() function to return the first row from the recordset as an array. Each call to mysql_fetch_array() returns the next row in the recordset. The while loop loops through all the records in the recordset. To print the value of each row, we use the PHP $row variable ($row['FirstName'] and $row['LastName']).
The output of the code above will be:

Peter Griffin
Glenn Quagmire

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Display the Result in an HTML Table

The following example selects the same data as the example above, but will display the data in an HTML table:

<?php
$con = mysql_connect("localhost","peter","abc123");
if (!$con)
  {
  die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
  }

mysql_select_db("my_db", $con);

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM Persons");

echo "<table border='1'>
<tr>
<th>Firstname</th>
<th>Lastname</th>
</tr>";

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
  {
  echo "<tr>";
  echo "<td>" . $row['FirstName'] . "</td>";
  echo "<td>" . $row['LastName'] . "</td>";
  echo "</tr>";
  }
echo "</table>";

mysql_close($con);
?>

The output of the code above will be:

Firstname	Lastname
Glenn	Quagmire
Peter	Griffin