how to include a php variable as part of a table name? - php

Question

I have a site where I needed to use separate table names for each of my clients because the data has to be updated all the time with a manual import.
example:
kansas_users
newyork_users
I have set a global variable as $client which will create the state name on all pages so if I echo "$client"; then I will see "kansas" for example on any page.
I would like to include this variable as part of my SQL query if possible to make it easier to code:
SELECT "nick, firstname, lastname, cell
FROM database.$client_members
where active =1 and id = $user->id";
Is this possible or even safe to do?

Answer 1

Yes it possible you can do some thing like below
<?php
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "myDB";
// Create connection
$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);
// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}
$client = 'kansas';
$table_name = "database." . $conn->real_escape_string($client) . "_members";
$query = sprintf("SELECT nick, firstname, lastname, cell
FROM %s WHERE active = 1 and id = ?", $table_name);
// prepare and bind
$stmt = $conn->prepare($query);
$stmt->bind_param("i", $user->id);
But i think you should seriously consider normalizing your database to avoid such issues