Question

I’m gettings started using mysqli prepared statements and am trying to write a class method that retrieves records matching certain date criteria, but does not display them — i want to be able to format the result outside of the class.

i have the class method working when it displays the results:

public function periodReceipts(){

    global $db;

    if($query = $db->prepare("SELECT * FROM receipts WHERE date BETWEEN ? AND ? ORDER BY date ASC")){
        $query->bind_param("ss", $this->date1, $this->date2);
        $query->execute();

        $query->bind_result($id, $user_id, $vendor, $amount, $cat, $date);

        $query->fetch();

        while($query->fetch()){
            echo "$id, $user_id, $vendor, $amount, $cat, $date <br/>";
        }

        $query->close();
    }
}

and i have a similar method working that performs a mysqli query, retrieves records, calculates a total, and returns that result, unformatted, to display later:

public function runningTotal(){

    global $db;

    if($query = $db->prepare("SELECT amount FROM receipts WHERE user_id = ?")){
        $query->bind_param("i", $this->uid);
        $query->execute();
        $query->bind_result($amount);
        $running_total = 0;
        while($query->fetch()){
            $running_total += $amount;
        }
        $query->close();
    }
    return $running_total;
    $db->close();
}

but i can’t figure out how to get the method periodReceipts() to behave similarly. I assume i need to get the data into an array, but how do i do that, and how do i access it later?

thanks!

Answer 1

Change your method like following

...
$result = array();
while($query->fetch()){
    $result[] = array(
        'id' => $id,
        'user_id' => $user_id,
        'vendor' => $vendor,
        'amount' => $amount,
        'cat' => $cat,
        'date' => $date
    );
}
$query->close();
return $result;
...

Then you’ll get all your records in array:

$result = $your_class_instance->periodReceipts();
var_dump($result);