set variable to field name of sql query - php

Question

My goal here is to set a variable to a field name from a mysql query. Some pseudo code below
1. $query = "SELECT firstName, lastName FROM users WHERE userName = 'mhopkins321';"
2. $result = mysql_query($result);
3. $while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
4. $column1 = name_of_column($row['firstName']);
5. }
6. echo $column1
//Would return the string
firstName
obviously line 4 being the real pseudo part

Answer 1

Is this what you're after?
$query = "SELECT firstName, lastName FROM users WHERE userName = 'mhopkins321';"
$result = mysql_query($result);
$all_results = array();
$while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
$formatted_row = array();
foreach ( $row as $column => $value ) {
$formatted_row[] = array($column, $value);
}
$all_results[] = $formatted_row;
}
Or just use $column and $value how you like inside the foreach loop.
Or do you want specifically the first column, which can be accessed with reset($row); $first_key = key($row);?

Answer 2

You want to name a variable with the name of the column?
$$row['firstName'] = $row['firstName'];
Another way is like this:
$query = "SELECT firstName, lastName FROM users WHERE userName = 'mhopkins321'";
$result = mysql_query($result);
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
foreach($r as $key=>$value){
$$key = $value;
}
Now you can echo the values out by their column name.

Answer 3

This sounds redundant, but you could always use array_search:
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
$value = $row['firstName'];
$key = array_search($value, $row);
}
See more on array_search.