Pulling Joined Table Data Before WHILE - php

Question

I am VERY new at MySQL and PHP writing. What I am having problems with is pulling data from specific tables, BEFORE the while line. My current code is
$query_join_tables = "SELECT m.*, c.id, c.firstname, c.lastname,
IFNULL(m.system_customer,c.id) AS client_id
FROM ... AS m
LEFT
JOIN ... as c
ON m.system_customer = c.id
WHERE system_customer=".$clientid."
ORDER BY system_id ASC";
$result = mysql_query($query_join_tables);
if (!$result) {
die('Invalid query: ' . mysql_error());
}
echo "BLA BLA BLA";
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)){
echo "MORE BLA BLA";
The problem is when I attempt to pull from the table BEFORE the while line it won't pull. If I pull after, it works just fine.
Does not work:
echo ".$row['firstname'].";
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)){
Does work:
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)){
echo ".$row['firstname'].";
Also, before mysqli or PDO are mentioned - I cannot do it. I'm writing a module for something that is encrypted and hard coded.

Answer 1

You will feel silly. The $row variable has not been given the fetched rows yet. when the line
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result)
is run, that is when ONE row's data is given to $row. Calling $row before this point will only give you a null value.
Each time the while loop starts again, it gets a new row. This is called an ITERATOR. It moves down the list one row at a time until it runs and finds nothing. That is when it will exit the loop.
EDIT (01/23/2015): Now that I understand that you actually want to have two loops use the same result. I will show how to reset the iterator.
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {Do Stuff}
mysql_data_seek($result, 0);
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {Do Stuff}
Hope this helps.

Answer 2

The mysql extension is deprecated and will be removed in the future. Use mysqli. Try following code.
$con = mysqli_connect("localhost","root","","dbname");
$query_join_tables = "SELECT m.*, c.id, c.firstname, c.lastname,
IFNULL(m.system_customer,c.id) AS client_id
FROM ... AS m
LEFT
JOIN ... as c
ON m.system_customer = c.id
WHERE system_customer=".$clientid."
ORDER BY system_id ASC";
$result = $con->query($query_join_tables);
$row = mysqli_fetch_array($result,MYSQLI_ASSOC);
echo $row["firstname"];
$conn->close();

Answer 3

Okay, Simply try this. It should work.
mysql_connect("localhost", "root", "") or
die("Could not connect: " . mysql_error());
mysql_select_db("dbName");
$query_join_tables = "SELECT m.*, c.id, c.firstname, c.lastname,
IFNULL(m.system_customer,c.id) AS client_id
FROM ... AS m
LEFT
JOIN ... as c
ON m.system_customer = c.id
WHERE system_customer=".$clientid."
ORDER BY system_id ASC";
$result = mysql_query($query_join_tables);
$res = mysql_fetch_array($result);
echo $res['vBookName'];
mysql_free_result($result);