How can I send a PHP variable array to a MySQL database? - php

Question

So I have a variable array created from scraping a plaintext data string from a webpage (using Simple HTML DOM Parser class). This variable is the formatted to make it more concise and useful.
I now wish to export this data into a MySQL table where the table name is the webpage title (scraped separately) and the data input is an array, where each word extracted from the webpage is a separate data record.
Here is my code (where $trimmed is a formatted variable string of data scraped from a user input webpage):
$trimmed->plaintext=trim($trimmed->plaintext);
$array = (explode(" ", $trimmed->plaintext));
$printarray = print_r ($array);
mysql_select_db("test", $connect) or die ('Could not find database.');
$sql = "CREATE TABLE '$title'";
$myquery = sprintf("INSERT INTO WebPage '%s'
VALUES '%s'",
mysql_real_escape_string($title->plaintext),
mysql_real_escape_string($printarray));
$result = mysql_query($myquery);
if (!$result) {
$message = '<br /><br /><br /> Invalid query: ' . mysql_error() . "\n";
$message .= '<br /><br /> Whole query entered here: ' . $myquery;
die($message);
}
The error is recieve when trying this is:
Invalid query: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ''Example Domain' VALUES '1'' at line 1
Whole query entered here: INSERT INTO WebPage 'Example Domain' VALUES '1'
I can provide more code if needed, and sorry in advance if I haven't explained this very well; I am quite new to this.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Your SQL:
INSERT INTO WebPage 'Example Domain' VALUES '1'
is not valid. Maybe you meant:
INSERT INTO `WebPage` ('Example Domain') VALUES ('1')
On a side note, if Example Domain is indeed a column name: you should really avoid spaces in field's names.

Answer 2

There are lot's of errors here.
First, The SQL you're generating for the insert looks incorrect:
INSERT INTO tableName (fields) VALUES (values)
Your code says:
INSERT INTO WebPage 'plainText' VALUES (array)
You should remove Webpage if you want to create a table named like the webpage title. Plus, it must be a single word (replace empty spaces with something like '_').
Second, you need to create the table. You need the proper CREATE TABLE structure prior to doing the insert.
Third, your echo print_r won't work for inserting a value per field (column). You need to iterate the array and for each key insert a value. But you should had already done this for creating the table columns.

Answer 3

It looks as if you are trying to incorporate the output from print_r in your query. This isn't possible as print_r is a function that outputs data from an array to the page.
In order to store the contents of an array in the database you can use json_encode to convert the array to a string. Then use json_decode when retrieving it so change it back into a php array.
E.g.
$myquery = sprintf("INSERT INTO `WebPage` ('%s')
VALUES ('%s')",
json_encode($title->plaintext),
json_encode($array)); //not $printarray as that is not an actual array
edit: As others have noted, mysql_real_escape_string is a deprecated function so other methods should be used to escape characters.
edit2: serialize could also be used in place of json_encode although I am not sure of the relative advantages/disadvantages. A more ideal method would be to restructure your database table to accommodate all contents of the array as a separate piece of data although this may sometimes not be practical.