Codeigniter Commands out of sync; you can't run this command now - php

Question

I've been spent hours trying to figure out how I'm supposed to get around this error in my scenario. I'm trying to run a few queries in sequence.
I have read: codeigniter : Commands out of sync; you can't run this command now, however I am not able to update /system/database/drivers/mysqli/mysqli_result.php
I've tried:
$this->db->reset_query();
$this->db->close();
$this->db->initialize();
$this->db->reconnect();
mysqli_next_result( $this->db->conn_id );
$query->free_result();
But they either give me the same error, or different errors which I will detail in the comments of my code.
The way my code is organized- I have a make_query method that takes a bunch of search options and figures out which tables to join and fields to search based on those. Sometimes, I just want to count results, sometimes I want all of the resulting data, sometimes I just want distinct values for certain fields or to group by certain fields. So I call make_query with my options, and then decide what to select afterwards. I have also been saving my query text to report, so that users can see what query is being run.
One interesting thing I have noted is that when I have no options set (ie there are no WHERE clauses in my SQL), I do not get this error and the multiple queries are able to run with no problem!
Here is my code:
//Get rows from tblPlots based on criteria set in options array
public function get_plot_data($options=array()){
$this->db->save_queries = TRUE;
log_message('debug','before make query 1 get plot data');
$this->make_query($options,'plot');
log_message('debug','after make query 1 get plot data');
$this->db->distinct();
//Now, set select to return only requested fields
if (!empty($options['fields']) and $options['fields']!="all" ){
//Because other tables could be joined, add table name to each select
array_walk($options['fields'], function(&$value, $key) { $value = 'tblPlots.'.$value;} );
$this->db->select($options['fields']);
}
if (!empty($options['limit']) and $options['limit']>0){
$this->db->limit($options['limit'], $options['offset']);
}
//Get the resulting data
$result=$this->db->get('tblProgram')->result();
$query_text = $this->db->last_query(); //tried removing this but didn't help
log_message('debug','query text '.$query_text);
$this->db->save_queries = FALSE;
//get the number of rows
//$this->db->reset_query();
//$this->db->close();
//$this->db->initialize();
//$this->db->reconnect();
//mysqli_next_result( $this->db->conn_id );
//$this->db->free_result(); //Call to undefined method CI_DB_mysqli_driver::free_result()
//$result->free_result(); //Call to a member function free_result() on array
log_message('debug','before make query 2');
$this->make_query($options,"plot");
$this->db->select('pkProgramID');
log_message('debug','before count results');
//this is where my code errors out trying to do the next step:
$count=$this->db->count_all_results('tblProgram');
}
I'm not including the code for make_query because it is long and calls other functions, but it runs successfully the first time and outputs the SQL query I would expect. If it would be helpful, I can include that code as well.
I'm not sure how to correctly call free_result() given that the CI documentation only gives an example using query('SQL QUERY') and I am building the query using Active Record, so I'm not sure how to use free result in my scenario? Maybe that's the issue?
$query2 = $this->db->query('SELECT name FROM some_table');
$query2->free_result();
Thank you for any help!

Answer 1

I ended up posting on a CI forum that suggested https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPiBhg6r5B0 which worked! Also I ended up having to join my tables differently to avoid timeouts (I think I was having trouble because I was using AJAX to call many queries asynchronously and one of them was timing out). Hope this helps someone!