PHP trying to get property of non-object in - php

Question

I have been banging my head against a wall for hours now, reading several answers on SO, searching the 'net, trying to find a solution. While I realize similar questions have been asked and answered here, my code is different so I can't extrapolate from previous answers what's wrong with mine.
I'm new to PHP/MySQL. I have a poll script that I patched together using some code I found online and my own knowledge; the MySQL is mine, standard stuff. Each time a person votes for one of two things, its corresponding value in the database in increased by one. I'm trying to retrieve and assign each value to its own variable and perform a calculation. I can retrieve the first one just fine, but I get the dreaded
Trying to get property of non-object in..." error and
"Fatal error: Call to a member function bind_param() on a non-object in...
for the second one. It's exactly the same as the first prepare, so I'm not sure what's wrong? This may not be the most efficient way to do this, but like I said, I'm new to this. I DO understand what the error is trying to convey; I just don't understand why I'm getting the error when the prepare statement is identical to the one before it except for the id in the WHERE clause. var_dump($query2) returns bool(false), so I can clearly see nothing is there. But there IS something in the database.
<?php
// Turn on error reporting
ini_set('display_errors', 'On');
// Connect to database
$mysqli = mysqli_connect('localhost', 'dbuser', 'dbpwd', 'dbname');
// Check connection
if (!$mysqli || $mysqli->connect_errno)
{
echo "Connection error: " . $mysqli->connect_errno . " " . $mysqli->connect_error;
exit();
} else if (isset($action)) // This is set through a page redirect
{
// DISPLAY ITEM - THIS WORKS FINE
if (!($query = $mysqli->prepare("SELECT votes FROM influential WHERE id = 1")))
{
echo "Prepare failed: " . $query->errno . " " . $query->error;
}
if (!$query->execute()){
echo "Execute failed: " . $mysqli->connect_errno . " " . $mysqli->connect_error;
}
if (!$query->bind_result($infl1))
{
echo "Bind failed: " . $mysqli->connect_errno . " " . $mysqli->connect_error;
}
if ($query->fetch())
{
echo $infl1;
}
// DISPLAY ITEM - THIS DOESN'T WORK
if (!($query2 = $mysqli->prepare("SELECT votes FROM influential WHERE id = 2")))
{
echo "Prepare failed: " . $query2->errno . " " . $query2->error;
} else echo "Prepare succeeded.";
$query2->bind_param("i", $votes);
if (!$query2->execute()){
echo "Execute failed: " . $mysqli->connect_errno . " " . $mysqli->connect_error;
} else echo "Execute succeeded.";
if (!$query2->bind_result($infl2))
{
echo "Bind failed: " . $mysqli->connect_errno . " " . $mysqli->connect_error;
} else echo "Bind succeeded.";
if ($query2->fetch())
{
echo $infl2;
}
exit();
$mysqli->close();
}
?>

Answer 1

In mysqli, when you issue the command:
.bind_param()
you are binding parameters to placeholders in the original query, not in the result. Your select query should read:
SELECT `votes` FROM `influential` WHERE `id`=?;
Then, you use bind_param to bind an integer to the placeholder, thusly:
.bind_param('i', $id);
After calling .execute(), the result is bound using references by calling .bind_result(). Whatever variable you pass into .bind_result() will contain the data afterwards.
Cheers