Question

I am attempting to insert a record to MySQL using PDO, my sql statement can be seen in the following code.

<?php
    try{
        //include file myfunctions.php allows us to calls functions from it
        include ("myfunctions.php");
        //Assign function getConnection() from myfunctions.php to variable $db
        $db = getConnection();


        foreach($_POST['chk'] as $check_value)
        {
            $check = $check_value;
            $fav = "channel/item [title = \"$check\"]";
            $holidayDoc = simplexml_load_file('holidays.xml');
            $favourites = $holidayDoc->xpath($fav);

        foreach($favourites as $currentFav)
        {
            echo "{$currentFav->link}". "<br \>";
            echo "{$currentFav->title}". "<br \>";
            echo "{$currentFav->description}". "<br \>";
            echo "{$currentFav->pubDate} ". "<br \>";

            $sql = "INSERT INTO `saved_holidays` (`subscriberID`, `link`, `pubDate`, `title`, `description`) 
            VALUES (`John`, `$currentFav->link`, `$currentFav->pubDate`, `$currentFav->title`, `$currentFav->description`)";

            $db->exec($sql);
            $db = null;
        }
    }
}
        catch(PDOException $e)
        {
            echo $e->getMessage();
        }
?>

When this code is executed i am met with the following error message;

SQLSTATE[42S22]: Column not found: 1054 Unknown column ‘John’ in
‘field list’

This is no doubt a simple solution to this problem but i cannot seem to see it, can anyone point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

I believe this is because you are using backticks for your values. Change them to single quotes and you should be good

$sql = "INSERT INTO `saved_holidays` (`subscriberID`, `link`, `pubDate`, `title`, `description`) 
            VALUES ('John', '$currentFav->link', '$currentFav->pubDate', '$currentFav->title', '$currentFav->description')";

Please refer to this SO question about single quotes versus backticks if you want more information