PHP is filling json with duplicates of last item - php

Question

I am working on a web app using php. I am trying to pull from a database and fill an array with the information then encode it to json.
Here is what I have so far:
$result = mysqli_query($db, $query);
$row = mysqli_fetch_array($result);
$frats = array();
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result)) {
$frat->name = $row['name'];
$frat->description = $row['description'];
$frat->chapter = $row['chapter'];
$frat->members = $row['members'];
$frat->cover_image = $row['cover_image'];
$frat->profile_image = $row['profile_image'];
$frat->calendar_image = $row['calendar_image'];
$frat->preview_image = $row['preview_image'];
$frat->address = $row['address'];
$frats[] = $frat;
}
echo json_encode($frats);
What I get in return is in the correct json format I want with the correct keys and everything, but every item in the json is the same. All of them are the last one. I believe this is because I might just be referencing the values, but I am not sure how to actually copy them in php.
Any suggestions?

Answer 1

you need to create a new instance of $frat inside the loop. Otherwise you are just updating the original $frat each time the loop runs and adding a reference to it in the array.
Assuming its not a static class you could use:
$frats = array();
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result)) {
$frat = new frat();
$frat->name = $row['name'];
$frat->description = $row['description'];
$frat->chapter = $row['chapter'];
$frat->members = $row['members'];
$frat->cover_image = $row['cover_image'];
$frat->profile_image = $row['profile_image'];
$frat->calendar_image = $row['calendar_image'];
$frat->preview_image = $row['preview_image'];
$frat->address = $row['address'];
$frats[] = $frat;
}
echo json_encode($frats);
Even better would be to modify the constructor or create a method to consume the data. If you used the class's constructor then you could do something like this:
$frats = array();
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result)) {
$frats[] &= new frat($row['name'], $row['description'], $row['chapter']);
}
echo json_encode($frats);

Answer 2

In the first line inside your while loop, you simply need the following line:
$frat = new \stdClass();

Answer 3

You need to properly declare your variables $frats (array) and $frat (object):
$frats = array();
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result)) {
$frat = (object) array();
$frat->name = $row['name'];
$frat->description = $row['description'];
$frat->chapter = $row['chapter'];
$frat->members = $row['members'];
$frat->cover_image = $row['cover_image'];
$frat->profile_image = $row['profile_image'];
$frat->calendar_image = $row['calendar_image'];
$frat->preview_image = $row['preview_image'];
$frat->address = $row['address'];
array_push($frats, $frat); // For backward compatiblity
}
echo json_encode($frats);