Compare rows in PHP - php

Question

Hi I would like to compare two tables from two different databases.
Select from the first database
$sql= mysqli_query ("SELECT * FROM emasa.staff_detail");
$row = mysqli_fetch_array($sql);
Select from the second database
$sql2 = mysqli_query ("SELECT * FROM employee");
$row2 = mysqli_fetch_array($sql2);
Then I compare the two table
if ($row['icnum'] == $row2['emp_ic'])
{
echo "Data already exist in both database.";
}
else
{
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($sql))
{
echo "<td align='center' height='30'>" . $row ['name'] . "</td>";
echo "<td align='center'>" .$row['icnum'] . "</td>";
}
}
But my problem is it only compares the first row in the database.
My output should only display the staff name that is not available in the other database. However, this is my output.
Based on the output it only compares the first row. So how do I change my code so that it compares the whole row. Please help me, thank you!

Answer 1

You're not looping through the results of the query. You're simply getting back the first row and going with that.
Ex:
$sql= mysqli_query ("SELECT * FROM emasa.staff_detail");
This is returning a result set which you then need to use
$row = mysqli_fetch_array($sql);
to get the actual values. The problem comes when
$row = mysqli_fetch_array($sql);
by itself only gives you one row.
Solution 1
You must use code like this:
while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($sql))
{
//Do some comparison
}
Since you're going to have to loop through two different result sets, you're going to have to do a loop within a loop, build an array of results and then loop through the results afterwards to output your HTML.
Ex:
while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($sql))
{
while($row2 = mysqli_fetch_array($sql2))
{
if ($row['icnum'] == $row2['emp_ic'])
{
//add to array of equal data
}
else
{
//add to array of not equal data
}
}
}
foreach($array as $not_equal_or_equal_data)
{
//output your desired HTML
}
Solution 2
Depending on what you actually care about, you could do a sql statement like this
$sql = "
SELECT
*
FROM
emasa.staff_detail AS sd
JOIN db2.employee AS e
ON sd.icnum = e.emp_ic";
This would return all the rows where those two columns were equal