Question

I am writing PHP code for a dynamic web page. The SQL query code below looks correct, but whenever the page runs, I keep getting the message within the die parameter.

$recipeid = $_GET['id'];
$query = "select title from recipes where recipeid = $recipeid";
$result = mysql_query($query) or die('Could not retrieve file');

Why does the query keep failing?

Answer 1

Aside from the SQL Injection ( look into mysql_real_escape_string ) add this to your error statement to see the exact error:

 $result = mysql_query($query) or die('Could not retrieve file: ' . mysql_error());

And it will tell you what is wrong.