PHP arrays of objects with mySQL - php

Question

Is there an easy way to make an array of objects in php when you have the objects attributes come from a mySQL query?
My code is below in order to show you what I'm doing. I'm probably far off because I'm not used to php at all and I can't grasp it for some reason.
public function loadMeals(){
$stmt = $this->conn->prepare("SELECT id, dishName, ingredients FROM meals");
$stmt->execute();
$stmt->bind_result($id, $dishName, $ingredients);
$meals = array();
while ($stmt->fetch()) {
$this->id = $id;
$this->dishName = $dishName;
$this->ingredients = $ingredients;
$meals[] = $this;
}
return $meals;
}
Keep in mind that this is all in a class Meals.
Thanks guys.

Answer 1

Based on how you are using it (creating an array of Meal objects, the method should be declared as a static method, called without $this context. The loop may create Meal objects via new self() and set the appropriate properties before appending onto the array.
If you think about it, this method's purpose is not to act on a single Meal, so it makes sense for it to be static.
Since it is called without $this context, you will need to pass the MySQLi connection as a parameter
public static function loadMeals($conn) {
// Do the query/fetch like you already have
// except that $conn is a local param, not a class prop.
$stmt = $conn->prepare("SELECT id, dishName, ingredients FROM meals");
$stmt->execute();
$stmt->bind_result($id, $dishName, $ingredients);
$meals = array();
while ($stmt->fetch()) {
// Create a new Meal object
$meal = new self();
// And set its properties
$meal->id = $id;
$meal->dishName = $dishName;
$meal->ingredients = $ingredients;
// Append it to the array
$meals[] = $meal;
}
// Return it
return $meals;
}
To use it, outside the class:
// Call the function statically.
// You'll need to pass the database connection to it
$meals = Meal::loadMeals($conn);
I'll point out that while it is very good to be in the habit of doing prepare()/execute(), you do not actually need it here since you are not passing any input into the query. You can just call $conn->query(), eliminating some complexity from MySQLi's bind_result() variable references.
$result = $conn->query("SELECT id, dishName, ingredients FROM meals");
if ($result) {
// Fetch and instantiate a Meal object in one go.
while ($meal = $result->fetch_object('Meal')) {
$meals[] = $meal;
}
}

Answer 2

This might be a short solution to your problem but consider using mysql_fetch_assoc when grabbing your elements from the database.
For more reading and example:
mysql_fetch_assoc documentation from php.net

Answer 3

For PDO:
public function loadMeals(){
$stmt = $this->conn->prepare("SELECT id, dishName, ingredients FROM meals");
$stmt->execute();
$meals = array();
while ($obj = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_OBJ)) {
$meals[] = $obj;
}
return $meals;
}
or $meal = $stmt->fetchObject('MyMeal', $ctor_args); See this from PHP manual. Also note the first comment about constructors there, to expect the unexpected results that using this may cause.