Only one query instead of two - php

Question

I have 2 tables, one is called post and one is called followers. Both tables have one row that is called userID. I want to show only posts from people that the person follows. I tried to use one MySQL query for that but it was not working at all.
Right now, I'm using a workaround like this:
$getFollowing = mysqli_query($db, "SELECT * FROM followers WHERE userID = '$myuserID'");
while($row = mysqli_fetch_object($getFollowing))
{
$FollowingArray[] = $row->followsID;
}
if (is_null($FollowingArray)) {
// not following someone
}
else {
$following = implode(',', $FollowingArray);
}
$getPosts = mysqli_query($db, "SELECT * FROM posts WHERE userID IN($following) ORDER BY postDate DESC");
As you might imagine im trying to make only one call to the database. So instead of making a call to receive $following as an array, I want to put it all in one query. Is that possible?

Answer 1

Use an SQL JOIN query to accomplish this.
Assuming $myuserID is an supposed to be an integer, we can escape it simply by casting it to an integer to avoid SQL-injection.
Try reading this wikipedia article and make sure you understand it. SQL-injections can be used to delete databases, for example, and a lot of other nasty stuff.
Something like this:
PHP code:
$escapedmyuserID = (int)$myuserID; // make sure we don't get any nasty SQL-injections
and then, the sql query:
SELECT *
FROM followers
LEFT JOIN posts ON followers.someColumn = posts.someColumn
WHERE followers.userID = '$escapedmyuserID'
ORDER BY posts.postDate DESC