PHP if else to check ipaddress against ones stored in table - php

Question

I've got just a quick little poll and a query to check and see if the IPaddress is already in the table to know if someone has already voted. I have the table created already and it works.
My question is with the if else statement it is not working. I am trying to make it
if ip address is in the table show string
else show poll
$ip=$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
include("../db/config.php");
include("../db/opendb.php");
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM Poll WHERE ip='$ip'");
if ($result==$ip) {
echo "Thank you for voting.";
} else {
echo "<form action=logvote.php method=post>" .
"<input type=radio name=ans value=ans1> Answer1<br>" .
"<input type=radio name=ans value=ans2> Answer2<br>" .
"<input type=radio name=ans value=ans3> Answer3<br>" .
"<input type=radio name=ans value=ans4> Answer4<br>" .
"<input type=submit value=Submit>";
echo "<input type=hidden name=ip value=";
echo "$ip>";
echo "</form>";
include("../db/closedb.php");
}
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You simply forgot to fetch a row first. Also, you can get the necessary information with a simple count:
$result = mysql_query("SELECT COUNT(*) as 'count' FROM Poll WHERE ip='$ip'");
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
if ($row['count']) {
// show string
} else {
// show poll
}

Answer 2

Your code should be:
$query = mysql_query("SELECT ip FROM Poll WHERE ip='$ip'");
$info = mysql_fetch_object($query);
$result = $info->ip;
if($result == $ip)
mysql_query() returns a reference not a string.
Also, using ip in the SELECT statement will speed up your code.

Answer 3

mysql_query does not return the data directly but rather a reference to the result.
You can get the number of rows found for the query with:
$num = mysql_numrows($result);
So you can check by:
$result = mysql_query("SELECT ip FROM Poll WHERE ip='$ip'");
if (mysql_numrows($result)) {
// dostuff
} else {
// do other stuff
}
// you can retrieve the ip like so:
$data = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
$ip = $data['ip'];