Question

I need a function for returning an array of services which each contains an id and a name.
I’ve been looking in the mysqli documentation, but cannot verify if there exists smarter solution than this:

function getServices() {
    $services = array();

    $stmt = $this->db->prepare('SELECT id, name FROM services WHERE client_id=?');
    $stmt->bind_param("i", $this->clientId);
    $stmt->execute();
    $stmt->bind_result($id, $name);
    while ($stmt->fetch()) {
        $service = array();
        $service['id'] = $id;
        $service['name'] = $name;
        $services[] = $service;
    }
    $stmt->close();

    return $services;
}

It seems a bit cumbersome that I have to build the resulting array myself. Is there a way to let mysql build the array using the selected columns?

Answer 1

I don’t use mysqli, but from inspecting the docs, I believe this should work:

$stmt = $this->db->prepare('SELECT id, name FROM services WHERE client_id=?');
$stmt->bind_param("i", $this->clientId);
$stmt->execute();

$result   = $stmt->get_result();
$services = $result->fetch_all( MYSQLI_ASSOC );

$stmt->close();

return $services;

Thus using:
1. mysqli_stmt::get_result()
2. mysqli_result::fetch_all()

It is for PHP >= 5.3.0.