Question

I have a function that generates a dropdown based on a query or array that is passed to it (it does more than that, but it’s immaterial to this question). I currently have both working fine, but there is a lot of redundancy in the function to make both queries and arrays work and I’d like to streamline it.

What I’m wondering if there is a way to “cast” or convert a query result to be treated as an associative array instead of a resource without having to loop over the query results. By the way, we’re currently on ms sql with no plans to move to another RDBMS.

EDIT:
Here’s my code (a bit modified from production, but you’ll get the gist).

function phpSelect($varName, &$queryName,$valueField, $displayField, $selectedValue, $returnFullSelect = true, $additionalAttributes = "", $distinctOnly = false){
/**
 * Creates select dropdown from SQL results and selects given value
 */
    $thisSelect = '';
    $resultsArray = array();

    //If they request a full tag, start it here//
    if($returnFullSelect){
        $thisSelect = "<select name=\"$varName\" id=\"$varName\" " .$additionalAttributes .'>
        ';
        $thisSelect .= '    <option value=""> </option>
        ';// clean up - decide if we should put a blank option first or not
    }

    if(is_resource($queryName) ){  // use this for queries
        if( mssql_num_rows($queryName) == 0) return '<!-- Query passed was empty -->';//If the query is empty, just return empty string
        mssql_data_seek($queryName,0);
        //new dBug($queryName);
        $row_thisQuery = mssql_fetch_assoc($queryName);
        $totalRows_thisQuery = mssql_num_rows($queryName);


        do {
            $tempAlreadyExists = array_search(trim(strtoupper($row_thisQuery[$valueField])),$resultsArray);
            if(!$distinctOnly or !is_numeric($tempAlreadyExists) ){ // if Distinct is set to false or this value is not already in the array, add to the array, otherwise, skip it
                $thisOption = '<option value="' .$row_thisQuery[$valueField] .'"';
                if( is_string($selectedValue) ){ //perform case insensitive check
                    if( strtoupper( trim($row_thisQuery[$valueField]) ) == strtoupper( trim($selectedValue) ) ){
                        $thisOption .=" selected";
                    }
                } else {
                    if($row_thisQuery[$valueField] == $selectedValue){
                        $thisOption .=" selected";
                    }
                }
                $thisOption .='>';
                $thisOption .= $row_thisQuery[$displayField];
                $thisOption .= '</option>
                    ';
                $thisSelect .= $thisOption;

                array_push($resultsArray,trim( strtoupper($row_thisQuery[$valueField]) )  );
            } //End checking for distinct values
        } while ($row_thisQuery = mssql_fetch_assoc($queryName)); 

        if($returnFullSelect){
            $thisSelect .= '</select>
            ';
        }
        return $thisSelect;

    } elseif( is_array($queryName) ){  // use this for arrays

        foreach ($queryName as $i => $values) {
            $thisOption = '<option value="' .$values[$valueField] .'"';
            if($values[$valueField] == $selectedValue){
                $thisOption .=" selected";
            }
            $thisOption .='>';
            $thisOption .= $values[$displayField];
            $thisOption .= '</option>
                ';
            $thisSelect .= $thisOption;


        }


        //If they request a full tag, end it here//
        if($returnFullSelect){
            $thisSelect .= '</select>
            ';
        }
        return $thisSelect;
    } else { // didn't pass a query or array, return failure
        return false;   
    }
}

Answer 1

Without lopping through here is no way to cast it all, however this is how you would do it looping, which is generally how everyone does it.

$arr=array();
while($row = mssql_fetch_assoc($result))
    $arr[]=$row;