Question

Here is my somewhat broken strategy

• If it is a query with no input ( always the same ), just use query();

  $results = $this->database_top->query( $query );
  

• If a single row is returned and there is input, do the prep (not shown here) and use

  $results = $pdoStatement->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC); 
  

• If multiple rows are returned and there is input,do the prep (not shown here) and use:

  $results = $pdoStatement->fetchAll(); 
  

Problem I’m facing is that I need the first method to return an array or array of arrays like the second and third.

Prep looks like this FYI

$this->database_top->quote($query);  // quote it
$pdoStatement = $this->database_top->prepare($query);  // prepare it
$results = $pdoStatement->execute($parameterArray); // execute it

How can I modify my code so that all 3 methods return arrays or array of arrays?

Iterating over query()

$result_array = $this->DatabaseObject->_pdoQuery( 'multiple', 'tweet_model' );
foreach( $result_array as $array_1d )
{
    $array_2d[]=$array_1d; 
}

Answer 1

query does not return results, so I’m not sure what you meant on the first example. query returns a PDOStatement. It’s basically the same as:

$qry = $db->query("...");
//equiv:
$qry = $db->prepare("...");
$qry->execute();

As vicTROLLA noted, the simplest solution is to just use:

$results = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);

However, if you need to process the results as you go for some reason, you could always loop over them manually.

$stmt = ...;
$results = array();
while ($row = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) { 
    $results[] = $row;
}
//use or return $results

$results will thus always be an array with 0 or more arrays inside of it.

I find it useful to build arrays where the array key is the primary key of the record:

while ($row = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) { 
    $results[$row['id']] = $row;
}

Also, I suspect that you’ve misunderstood the purpose and functionality of quote. It is used for escaping strings that you are going to interpolate into a query, not for magically escaping all values in a query (hence $db->quote($query) makes no sense).

Even worse is that drivers are not required to support quote. (Though it does at least return false if there’s no support.)

prepare is massively preferred over quote.