Question

First stackoverflow question ever woot!

FUNCTION : To check and see if data exist before allowing INSERT – trying to make it non-case senstive and as open as possbile since the title I’m trying to avoid a dup is only for a specifc artistid (explained below)

The table row structure is as follows

• id (auto_increment)
• artist (specfic id number only assigned to that artist)
• title (what we are trying to make sure we don’t get a dupicate only for this artist

ISSUE : Does not get needed data from database or post defined error, might be wrong in if statement = unknown exactly what is issue

$_POST[‘title’]; is passed from user input

            if (isset($submit)) {
                $date = date("Ymd");
                $cleanTitle =  $_POST['title'];
                $querytitle = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['title']);
                $queryalbum = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['album']);

                // Check to see if Title exist for specfic Artist
                $checkTitle = mysql_query("SELECT * from lyrics WHERE artist = '$artist'");
                if (!$checkTitle) {
                    die('Query Failed');
                } 
                if ($checkTitle == $cleanTitle)  {
// do whatever
}
                print_r($checkTitle); // the data returned from the query

UPDATE : INSERT IGNORE wouldn’t work sicne I’m inserting the data via $artist and need to check and see if title exist on that artist first. or i might be wrong. i’m unsure on how to do it
$artist is a specfic ID number defined higher in the code

Answer 1

Your code was incorrect, but this should work:

if (isset($submit)) {
    $date = date("Ymd");
    $cleanTitle =  $_POST['title'];
    $querytitle = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['title']);
    $queryalbum = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['album']);
    // !!! $artist is not actually set anywhere here..
    $checkTitle = mysql_query("SELECT * from lyrics WHERE artist = '$artist'");
    if (!$checkTitle) {
        die('Query Failed');
    } 
    /* now that you have run the query, you need to get the result: */
    // (This is assuming your query only returns one result)//
    $result = mysql_fetch_array($checkTitle);
    // now check the value for 'title'
    if ($result['title'] == $cleanTitle)  {
        // do whatever
    }
    print_r($result); // the data returned from the query
}

You were running the query, but you were not getting the results of the query. You use mysql_fetch_array() to get the results. To get the results of multiple entries, you can use the following:

// will print the 'title' for each results
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($checkTitle)) {
    echo $row['title'];
}

Now with all of that said, you should know that mysql_* is going through a deprecation process and should be replaced with mysqli or PDO. Please read the following:

Please, don’t use mysql_* functions in new code. They are no longer maintained and the
deprecation process has begun on it. See the
red box? Learn about prepared statements instead, and use
PDO or MySQLi – this article will help you decide which. If you choose
PDO, here is a good tutorial.