Uncaught PDOException: column does not exist - php

Question

I'm new to PHP and I'm trying to do a query. I made a function getUser thats selects all the users from the user table.
function getUsers() {
global $conn;
$query = $conn->prepare("SELECT * FROM user ORDER BY userid DESC");
$query->execute();
return $query->fetchAll();
}
I heard that it can be case sensitive so I changed all my attributes to lower case to avoid problems but the query can't find any column whatever the name is.
This is my PDO connection which is connecting and not reporting any errors:
session_set_cookie_params(3600, '/~lbaw1641/proto/');
session_start();
$BASE_DIR = '/home/luiscosta/PhpstormProjects/LBAW-FEUP/';
$BASE_URL = 'LBAW-FEUP/';
//Connect to the database
try {
$dbuser = 'luiscosta';
$dbpass = '123';
$host = 'localhost';
$dbname = 'lbaw';
$conn = new PDO("pgsql:host=$host;dbname=$dbname", $dbuser, $dbpass);
}catch (PDOException $e) {
echo "Error : " . $e->getMessage() . "<br/>";
die();
}
$conn->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_DEFAULT_FETCH_MODE, PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
$conn->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
Here's my error trace:
#0 /home/luiscosta/PhpstormProjects/LBAW-FEUP/database/users.php(15): PDOStatement->execute()
#1 /home/luiscosta/PhpstormProjects/LBAW-FEUP/controller/pages/top_scored_users.php(6): getUsers()
#2 {main}
thrown in /home/luiscosta/PhpstormProjects/LBAW-FEUP/database/users.php on line 15
And my user table DDL, which as you can see has all of the attributes in lower case:
CREATE TABLE "user"
(
userid INTEGER DEFAULT nextval('user_userid_seq'::regclass) PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
username VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
email VARCHAR(70) NOT NULL,
password VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
fullname VARCHAR(200),
about VARCHAR(500),
website VARCHAR(150),
signup_date DATE DEFAULT ('now'::text)::date NOT NULL,
last_login TIMESTAMP,
locationid INTEGER NOT NULL,
roleid INTEGER NOT NULL,
CONSTRAINT "FK_user_location" FOREIGN KEY (locationid) REFERENCES location (locationid),
CONSTRAINT "FK_user_userRole" FOREIGN KEY (roleid) REFERENCES "userRole" (roleid)
);
Do you guys have any idea what is wrong? Since I'm new, is there a better way to debug and check if my DB connection is up and running?

Answer 1

In PostgreSQL, user is a system information function, equivalent to current_user that returns the "user name of current execution context" (quoted from the documentation.) You can check this question for more details.
That's why you had to quote it when creating the table (CREATE TABLE "user" instead of CREATE TABLE user.)
The userid column from your table obviously doesn't exist in the return of that function. You may be able to get it to work by quoting "user" in your SELECT query, but I think the best solution is to just change the name of the table to something that doesn't already mean something to your database. Maybe users instead?