Question

I got a Bash/PHP script that retrieves records from a table called ‘assess_2012’ and stores records that need to be written to a table called ‘assess_2012_err’ in a multidimensional array:

#!/usr/bin/php -q

<?php
$host = "localhost";
$user = "username";
$pass = "password";
$name = "reassess";

$conn = mysqli_connect($host, $user, $pass, $name) OR die ("Could not connect to database: " . mysqli_error($conn) . "\n");

$q = "SELECT su_id, ass_date, ind_d FROM assess_2012";
$r = mysqli_query ($conn, $q);

if ($r) {
    while ($row = mysqli_fetch_array($r, MYSQLI_ASSOC)) {

        // Check for errors:
        if ($row['ind_d'] == 'Y') {
            // Add to the array:
            $sql[] = array('su_id' => $row['su_id'], 'err_code' => 1);
        }
    }
    var_dump($sql);
}
else {
    // SELECT query failed:
    echo "Error: " . mysqli_error($conn) . "\n";
}
?>

The ‘var_dump’ looks like this (shortened version – the actual query returns hundreds of records):

array(1) {
  [0]=>
  array(2) 
    ["su_id"]=>
    string(1) "5"
    ["err_code"]=>
    int(1)
  }
  [1]=>
  array(2) {
    ["su_id"]=>
    string(4) "1492"
    ["err_code"]=>
    int(1)
  }
}

What I can’t figure out is how I can use the array to produce a query like this:

INSERT INTO assess_2012_err (su_id, err_code) VALUES (5, 1), (1492, 1)

Answer 1

You’ll be better off doing one by one, like so

foreach($sql as $variables)
{
  // Insert here: 
  INSERT INTO asses_2012_err (su_id, err_code) VALUES ($variables['su_id'], $variables['err_code']);

}

Some important things to bear in mind:

• Treat those inputs as user inputs, sanitise them!
• Try to use PDO as mysql_* functions are going to be deprecated
• Consider a data abstraction layer (so all your queries are hidden away inside nice functions)