How do I get a the pending status to automatically show up? - php

Question

I have this leave form where employees can apply for a leave. Everything works fine, the only problem is I can't get the pending status to show up. I've already defined the default value of status on my table.
Here's what it looks like when I view the leaves:
view-leave
and here's my table structure:
Table Structure
I'm not sure if you guys need my view-leave code but here it is:
<div class="table-responsive">
<table class="table">
<tr>
<th>Employee Name</th>
<th>Phone</th>
<th>Email</th>
<th>From</th>
<th>To</th>
<th>Reason</th>
<th>Status</th>
</tr>
<?php
include ('database.php');
$result = $database->prepare ("SELECT * FROM leaves order by id DESC");
$result ->execute();
for ($count=0; $row_message = $result ->fetch(); $count++){
?>
<tr>
<td><?php echo $row_message['full_name']; ?></td>
<td><?php echo $row_message['phone']; ?></td>
<td><?php echo $row_message['email']; ?></td>
<td><?php echo $row_message['fromdate']; ?></td>
<td><?php echo $row_message['todate']; ?></td>
<td><?php echo $row_message['reason']; ?></td>
<td><?php echo $row_message['status']; ?></td>
</tr>
<?php } ?>
</table>
<button type="button" class="btn btn-primary"><i class="glyphicon glyphicon-arrow-left"></i> Back</button>
</div>
</div>

Answer 1

The DEFAULT key word determines behaviour during an INSERT, not during a SELECT. Whatever values are in the table are what you will see, regardless of what the current DEFAULT is.
If you want something similar to a default during a SELECT, try the following...
SELECT
id,
full_name,
phone,
email,
fromdate,
todate,
reason,
COALESCE(status, 'Pending') AS status
FROM
leaves
ORDER BY
id DESC
This will replace all NULL values in status with 'Pending' while you are selecting the data. It won't change anything in the table, just in your results.
If you want to change what is in the table to get rid of those "blank" values, the you need to do an UPDATE.
UPDATE
leaves
SET
status = 'Pending'
WHERE
status IS NULL
OR status = ''
If you want to stop blanks values getting in to the table in the future, you need to specifically mention all the fields except for the the ones that you want to have a default applied.
INSERT INTO
leaves (
full_name,
phone,
email,
fromdate,
todate,
reason
)
VALUES (
'Joe Bloggs',
'555 555 555',
'joe#bloggs.com',
'2017-04-01',
'2018-12-25',
'Just Because'
)
That list of field names at the start is critical.
If you skip it, you're telling the database you want to set the values for every column, and so you never want the default used. The same is true if you include status in the list : Even if you give the value NULL or '', you're telling the database that's the value you want, regardless of what the default might be.