Question

I have a list of various postal information. This data is within a mysql table called “postal_codes”.

I would like to add each row of this table into a local array for use in a script.

The problemt hat I am facing is that I keep getting errors relating to undefined variables within the while loop.

Here is the code I have so far:

// Get postal info and make into array
$postalCodes[] = array();
if ($stmt = $link->prepare("SELECT id, suburb, boxCode, streetCode, townName FROM postal_codes")) {

    if (!$stmt->execute())
    {
        printf("failed to execute");
    }
    if (!$stmt->bind_result($id, $suburb, $boxCode, $streetCode, $townName))
    {
        printf("failed to bind params");
    }
    if (!$stmt->store_result())
    {
        printf("failed to store result");
    }
    while ($stmt->fetch())
    {
        $postalCodes['id'] += $id;
        $postalCodes['suburb'] += $suburb;
        $postalCodes['boxCode'] += $boxCode;
        $postalCodes['streetCode'] += $streetCode;
        $postalCodes['townName'] += $townName;
    }
    $stmt->close();
}

foreach ($postalCodes as $postalCode)
{
    if ($postalCode['boxCode'] == 5850)
    {
        printf("{$postalCode['suburb']}");
    }
}

Could someone by chance spot the problem with this code or suggest a way for me to code this procedure in a better way.

Any assistance and insight in this regard would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Answer 1

The “error” is probably caused by your associative array:

$postalCodes['id'] += $id;

Ask yourself: what is the value of $postalCodes['id'] the first time you call this? It still isn’t defined. So you can either initialize the variables beforehand, or you can switch off warnings of this type through error_reporting().

EDIT: The array-issue

You want to do something like:

$postalCodes=array();
while ($stmt->fetch()) {
    $postalCodes[] = array('id' => $id,
        'suburb' => $suburb,
        'boxCode' => $boxCode,
        'streetCode' => $streetCode,
        'townName' => $townName);
}
foreach($postalCodes as $postalCode) {
    // do whatever you need to do
    // with the associative array, e.g.
    echo $postcalCode['boxCode'];
}

I think you were confused about the meaning of +=. If you want to add an element to your array, you use array[]=something.