Question

I have a php class that interacts with mysql database and then fetches an array as a result.

$res = $db->getResult(); // $res is an array

I use it with print_r :

print_r($res);

and it outputs this:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [id] => 1
            [firstname] => Mohamed
            [lastname] => Kadri
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [id] => 2
            [firstname] => Slim
            [lastname] => Nejmaoui
        )

    [2] => Array
        (
            [id] => 3
            [firstname] => Sameh
            [lastname] => Chraiti
        )

And with foreach:

foreach ($res as $row) {
    echo $row['id'] . ' ' . $row['firstname'] . ' ' . $row['lastname'] . '<br />';
}

it outputs this:

1 Mohamed Kadri
2 Slim Nejmaoui
3 Sameh Chraiti

but when there is only one row, it shows this:

1 1 1
M M M    
K K K

(1 is the id, M is the first letter in the firstname and K is the first letter in the lastname).

So maybe when there is more than one row the class generates a multidimensional array and the foreach will work on it, and when there is only one row it generates a simple array that will be treated as a multidimensional array by this exact foreach.

So should I make a condition to process one of two types of foreach?

Thanks.

Answer 1

apparently your db object return a single array when you have only one result somthing like that:

Array
(
    [id] => 2
    [firstname] => Slim
    [lastname] => Nejmaoui
)

you can test first input and if this is not an array don’t loop thrue the foreach else do a foreach

if( is_array(current($res)) ){
  // do the foreach...
}else{
  echo $res['id'] . ' ' . $res['firstname'] . ' ' . $res['lastname'] . '<br />';
}

I think you should change your db class to always return a nested array even on single row result to keep your results consistents.