all elements of column into a array?? doubt

[puvi]

hi frens,

i have a weird doubt haunting me. please clear it for me..

lets say i have a table(EMP) containing fields emp_name and emp_dept, n there are around 10 records in the table. now i want to print all the emp_name. i know we can do as follows

$empname=mysql_fetch_array($result);
echo $empname;

and loop it.

is there any other way of getting all the names at one go as a array??

thanks

[sudeepjd]

A standard way to do it would be

while ($empname=mysql_fetch_array($result)){
   echo $empname['emp_name'];
}

or if you want it as an array you could always

$empArray = array();
while ($empname=mysql_fetch_array($result)){
  $empArray[]=$empname['empname'];
}

You could always try PDO. This has a command for getting record fields -> array using fetchAll. From the php manual on PDO:

<?php
$sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT name, colour FROM fruit");
$sth->execute();

/* Fetch all of the values of the first column */
$result = $sth->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_COLUMN, 0);
var_dump($result);
?>

Will give:

Array(3)
(
    [0] =>
    string(5) => apple
    [1] =>
    string(4) => pear
    [2] =>
    string(10) => watermelon
)

However, introducing PDO for this may be a bit heavy-handed. If you're looking for a simple solution, I suggest placing the values into an array via loop as mentioned by sudeepjd.

[puvi]

thanks guys..

please clear one more doubt..

lets say, i have a table(Name) with fields first_name, mid_name and last_name. records in the table are as follows:
1. tom-robert-hanks
2. angel-diva-hanks
3. nick-kick-hanks
4. jingle-doll-bond
5. james-cool-bond
6. john-mac-bond

now i want to fetch all the first_name having last_name as bond into a array.

$query="select * from Name where last_name='hanks'";
$result=mysql_query($query);
$row=mysql_fetch_array($result);

now, what will be there with $row, is it just the 1st row containing hanks??
how do i access the next two names..

pls clear this for me..it may sound silly but really confusing me..

thannks

[sudeepjd]

Hmm... Did you read the previous post... Cos you missed out on the while loop. What the mysql_fetch_array() does is to get one row at a time and move the pointer on to the next row. So the second call to mysql_fetch_array() with the same $result resource would give you the information from the second row, hence the need for the while loop.

So in order to get all the names you would need

$name = array();
$query="select * from Name where last_name='hanks'";
$result=mysql_query($query);
while ($row=mysql_fetch_array($result)){
   $name[]=$row['first_name']." ".$row['mid_name']." ".$row['last_name'];
}
var_dump($name);

The var_dump would give you the array of $name and the keys used to access each of the names.

[puvi]

thanks guys that helped me..