MySQL Select Specific Column - php

Question

I'm new to PHP and I was wondering how to select a specific column from a row. For example if I wanted to display the first name of Joe Bugly where ID, first name, last name, and email are all columns.

Answer 1

Assuming that you don't want all columns that would be returned with select * from ... (a), you can simply list the desired columns explicitly:
select fname, lname from ...
For example, suppose you know your user ID is jbug01 and you just want the corresponding email address:
select email
from users
where userid = 'jbug01'
In terms of doing this within PHP, the following code snippet may help:
<?php
$conn = mysql_connect ("localhost", "paxdiablo", "supersekritsauce");
if (!$conn) {
die ('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
}
mysql_select_db ("my_database", $conn);
$result = mysql_query ("select email from users where userid = 'jbug01'");
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array ($result)) {
echo $row['email'] . "<br />";
}
mysql_close ($conn);
?>
(a) There are precious few cases where selecting * makes sense (other than tools that need to get all columns such as DB viewers).
You should usually prefer to be explicit with your column selections. This may allow you to detect problems with schema changes much earlier in the process than will be the case if you just blindly select everything.
It will also result in less information being transmitted which may not be important for small databases or systems where everything runs on the same box but it will affect scalability of your system, both in terms of data size and distribution across a network.

Answer 2

Try this:
$conn = mysql_connect("localhost","root");
mysql_select_db("DbName",$conn);
$query = "Select u.FirstName from Users u";
$results = mysql_query($query);
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($results)){
echo $row['FirstName'];
}

Answer 3

Try this:
$db = new PDO('mysql:host=hostname;dbname=dbname', 'username', 'password');
$stmt = $db->query('select id from games where ...');
while ($id = $stmt->fetchColumn(0)) {
echo $id;
}
Mark answer if this helps.
Reference

Answer 4

This is actually an SQL question ;)
Depends on how you are selecting record of Joe Bugly. If you are selecting on basis of ID, then
SELECT fname
FROM your_table_name
WHERE ID = <ID of Joe Bugly>
This way you have selected a record and by applying fname in SELECT clause, you are filtering the number of columns you want