Question

I want to conditionally build a SQL statement and am having issues. In this case, there may be a WHERE clause or not.

$sql=null;
$arr='';

if( $id != 'all' ){
    $sql = '  WHERE type = :type AND id=:id';
    $arr = array(':type'=>$type,':id'=>$id);
}

$stmt = $dbh->prepare("SELECT * FROM table $sql");
$stmt->execute($arr);
...

If the id is equal to ‘all’, then I just want to rewrite the sql without a WHERE clause.
Since I have to pass $arr to execute, I get the folowing error when id = ‘all’ because execute is expecting a value:
PHP Warning: PDOStatement::execute() expects parameter 1 to be array, string given

I’ve tried passing execute an empty array but get an error as well.
How do I do this without having to rewrite two complete blocks of sql, each with its own execute statememt?

Answer 1

It looks like you need to move the prepare statement into the if section, adding a second prepare statement for the second case. It’d probably be better (for readability’s sake) if you also added an else for when id === 'all'.