PhP $stmt->fetch() while loop keeps replacing existing data - php

Question

Running $stmt->fetch() in a while() loop replaces all previously collected data in an object with the last record, even if you push it to an array in the loop.
I have a simple database called dbemployee
I've written a small script to get all the employees above a specific age.
Heres my code:
<?php
$conn = mysqli_connect("localhost", "root", "", "test");
if ($conn->connect_error) {
die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}
$output = new stdClass();
$employee = new stdClass();
// $ageCheck = $_POST['ageCheck'];
$ageCheck = 18;
$sql = "SELECT ID, vemail, vname, vage FROM dbemployee WHERE vage > ?";
$stmt = $conn->stmt_init();
if ($stmt->prepare($sql)) {
$stmt->bind_param("s",$ageCheck);
$stmt->execute();
$stmt->store_result();
$stmt->bind_result($ID, $vemail, $vname, $vage);
if ($stmt->num_rows > 0) {
while ($stmt->fetch()) {
$employee->ID = $ID;
$employee->vemail = $vemail;
$employee->vname = $vname;
$employee->vage = $vage;
$output->data[] = $employee;
}
} else {
$output->data = "";
}
$output->response = "SUCCESS";
}
header('Content-Type: application/json');
print_r($output);
?>
Surprisingly all I'm getting is 5 entries of the last result as if the last result is replacing previous results.

Answer 1

You need to create an instance inside the loop, otherwise it will point to the same memory address:
while ($stmt->fetch()) {
$employee = new stdClass;
$employee->ID = $ID;
...
You can check this in the docs (https://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.basic.php):
When assigning an already created instance of a class to a new variable, the new variable will access the same instance as the object that was assigned. This behaviour is the same when passing instances to a function. A copy of an already created object can be made by cloning it.