Question

How could i get $result too equal nothing if the column doesn’t exist in PHP?

I was thinking something like this:

$result=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username=$key DESC LIMIT 1")or die ($result = '');

But i was told thats wrong.

Answer 1

It’s wrong because you’re killing the script with die when a DB error occurs, rather than doing stuff when you find no row.

What you presumably need is more like:

$result = mysql_query($query);
if ($result) {
  if ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    // do stuff with row
  } else {
    // do stuff without row
  }
} else { // not needed but left here for illustration purposes
  // this is the part that would occur, had you called mysql_query(...) or die;
  die(mysql_error());
}