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Asked: 2026-05-12T12:07:56+00:00

Below is just a mockup of 2 codes in php/mysql. The first one returns

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Below is just a mockup of 2 codes in php/mysql.
The first one returns a mysql result and run a while loop to iterate the results, the second one does almost the same thing but instead puts the result into a query and then puts it to screen. Now for a more OO approach the second method would be better I think (not sure, i’m learning) however where I am confused is, wouldn’t using the second method below use twice as much memory? Isn’t it basicly creating 2 arrays instead of 1?

Putting it into an array seems a lot more flexible, please give me your tips/advice. Keep in mind it would not be a simple thing ran 1 time on a page either, a real world example on a page on my site that array might contain 5,000 usernames and userID number in the array and multiple queries might be made on the same page all with different data.

<?PHP
// first method without using array
$url = "http://www.google.com/";
$sql = "SELECT user_id, nickname FROM `".TABLE_USERS."`
          WHERE referrer LIKE '".$db->escape($url)."%'
          ORDER BY nickname DESC
          LIMIT 0,10";

$rows = $db->query($sql);

while ($record = $db->fetch_array($rows)) {
    echo "<tr><td>$record[user_id]</td>
          <td>$record[nickname]</td></tr>";
}
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//second method using array
$url = "http://www.google.com/";
$sql = "SELECT user_id, nickname FROM `".TABLE_USERS."`
          WHERE referer LIKE '".$db->escape($url)."%'
          ORDER BY nickname DESC
          LIMIT 0,10";

// feed it the sql directly. store all returned rows in an array
$rows = $db->fetch_all_array($sql);

// print out array later on when we need the info on the page
foreach($rows as $record){
    echo "<tr><td>$record[user_id]</td>
          <td>$record[nickname]</td></tr>";
}

?>
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The second method will use a lot more than twice as much memory. The first method is only fetching a single row at a time and sending it to STDOUT. The second method reads in every row into an array. If you have 5000 rows, it’s going to use approximately 5000 times the memory (not accounting things like PHP’s internal output buffering, etc).

    The second method does allow you to manipulate the data much more, but it definitely uses a lot more memory. If you are really dealing with that much data on a page, you might have to find ways to break it down if you start to run into resource problems.

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