Another SQL query in a loop (row) query - php

Question

I am struggling with my code. I try to make a News Feed.
The news feed is working well but now I want to add a avatar picture on each news row to have a picture from the author. The avatar picture path is in a different table (users).
That means I need to get in the loop the specific user ID ($row['uid']) and with that uid I need to get the related path from the user's avatar in the user table.
If I try to use a query in my loop it shows me only one result instead of 6 as specified in my query.
Do you have any suggestion or advise how I can solve that issue?
Many thanks for your support!
This is my attempt for the moment:
<div class="timeline p-4 block mb-4">
<?php
// Getting the user id and the feedmessage from Table "activity_feed"
$statement = $pdo->prepare("SELECT feed_message, uid FROM activity_feed WHERE cid = :cid ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 6");
$result = $statement->execute(array('cid' => $cid));
$count = 1;
while($row = $statement->fetch())
{
// Starting the News feed Loop
?>
<?php
// This will repeat now X times as defined in the query above by = LIMIT ?
// Getting the avatar path from the user table
$statement = $pdo->prepare("SELECT avatar FROM users WHERE id = :id");
$result = $statement->execute(array('id' => $row['uid']));
$user_avatar = $statement->fetch();
?>
<style>
#circle_feed {
height:50px;
width:50px;
border-radius:50%;
/* Including the avatar path from query above*/
background-image: url("<?php echo $user_avatar['avatar']; ?>");
background-position:center;
background-size:cover;
}
</style>
<div class="tl-item ">
<div class="tl-dot"><a class="tl-author" href="#" data-abc="true">
<!-- Including the Avatar circle here-->
<span class="w-40 avatar circle gd-warning border" id="circle_feed"></span></a>
</div>
<div class="tl-content">
<div class=""><?php echo $row['feed_message']; ?></div>
<div class="tl-date text-muted mt-1">DATE</div>
</div>
</div>
<?php
// News Feed Loop is ending here
}
?>
</div>
</div>

Answer 1

There is no need to loop. SQL is a set-based language that can give your the results that you want in a single query, using the join syntax:
SELECT
af.feed_message,
af.uid,
u.avatar
FROM activity_feed af
INNER JOIN users u ON u.id = af.uid
WHERE af.cid = :cid
ORDER BY af.id DESC
LIMIT 6
This is much more efficient than running 7 queries (one for the activity feed, then one for each row returned by the first query, in a PHP loop).
You can then fetch the rows of the resultset and use this directly in your application.