SQL pulling first character of each column - php

Question

So I've got a dropdown that has a list of customers that you can select from. It uses a function (that someone else built) which works fine when there are 2 or more customers but dies when there it only one. When there's one customer, each item in the dropdown is the first character of each column for that one customer.
Here is the function:
function getCustomerBy($column = "",$value = "")
{
global $conn;
if ($value == '')
{
return(null);
}
$sel = "SELECT
customers.*,
customerStatus.code customerStatus
FROM customers,
customerStatus
WHERE customer_id
and customerStatus.id = customers.customerStatus_id and ". mysqli_real_escape_string($conn,$column) ."='". mysqli_real_escape_string($conn,$value) ."'";
// error_log($sel);
$run = mysqli_query($conn, $sel);
$check = mysqli_num_rows($run);
if ($check ==1)
{
$row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($run);
return($row);
}
elseif($check >1)
{
$rows = array();
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($run))
{
$rows[] = $row;
}
return($rows);
}
else
{
return(null);
}
}
I'm fairly certain that it's the ($check == 1) stuff but I can't work out the best way to re-do all of that to make it work without causing other errors (specifically "cannot modify header")
This is what's called up on the page with the dropdown:
$customers = getCustomerBy('users_user_id',$user['user_id']);
Also, here is the code for the dropdown:
<?
foreach ($customers as $customer)
{
$selected = '';
if (isset($gig['customers_customer_id']) && $customer['customer_id'] == $gig['customers_customer_id'])
{
$selected = ' selected ';
}
echo "\t<option value=\"".$customer['customer_id']."\" $selected>".$customer['customer_company_name']."</option>";
}
?>

Answer 1

The code that builds the dropdown is expecting an array of arrays, but instead when it's a single row you're passing it an array of strings. Treat both cases ($check > 0) the same.
function getCustomerBy($column = "",$value = "")
{
global $conn;
if ($value == '')
{
return(null);
}
$sel = "SELECT
customers.*,
customerStatus.code customerStatus
FROM customers,
customerStatus
WHERE customer_id
and customerStatus.id = customers.customerStatus_id and ". mysqli_real_escape_string($conn,$column) ."='". mysqli_real_escape_string($conn,$value) ."'";
// error_log($sel);
$run = mysqli_query($conn, $sel);
$check = mysqli_num_rows($run);
if($check > 0)
{
$rows = array();
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($run))
{
$rows[] = $row;
}
return($rows);
}
else
{
return(null);
}
}
I assume there's copy/paste errors in your query because it doesn't look right.

Answer 2

I don't know how the returning array is used by the rest of your code but you can try the following:
Change:
if ($check ==1) {
$row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($run);
return($row);
}
To this:
if ($check == 1) {
$rows = array();
$rows[] = mysqli_fetch_assoc($run);
return($rows);
}