Question

I’m trying to display comments on my site from my database. I know that my connection is working, as shown by $test (which displays “Array”).

How do I convert the array into usable information? This is my best shot, but it doesn’t display anything:

<?php
$connect;

$sql_get_topic_info = "SELECT * FROM wall ORDER BY time ASC"; 
$res_get_comments_info = mysql_query($sql_get_comments_info); 
$num_get_comments_info = mysql_numrows($res_get_comments_info); 
$test = mysql_fetch_array(mysql_query($sql_get_topic_info)); //just to make sure the connection is working
echo $test; //displays "Array"


//Runs comment loop 
$i=0; 
while ($i < $num_get_comments_info) { 

$sel_comments_info_time = mysql_result($res_get_comments_info,$i,"time"); 
$sel_comments_info_message = mysql_result($res_get_comments_info,$i,"message"); 
$sel_comments_info_company = mysql_result($res_get_comments_info,$i,"company"); 

echo "<li>Company: $sel_comments_info_company<br/>"; 
echo "Comment: $sel_comments_info_message <br/>";
echo "$sel_comments_info_time"; 
echo "</li>"; 

$i++; 
} 
?>

Updated script: (from answer below)

$result = mysql_query("SELECT company, message FROM wall");

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_BOTH)) {
printf ("company: %s  message: %s", $row["company"], $row["message"]);
}

mysql_free_result($result);

which prints:

company: company 1 message: message 1company: company 2 message: message 2company: company 3 message: message 3

Answer 1

Usage of mysql_ is discouraged, you should be using mysqli_ functions instead.

From mysql_fetch_array documentation:

$result = mysql_query("SELECT id, name FROM mytable");

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_NUM)) {
    printf("ID: %s  Name: %s", $row[0], $row[1]);  
}

Use print_r($test) to see the array to see its format. Then you can use the loop above to display the parts of it in whatever order you want. Each column from your database is in the resulting row

row = [col1, col2, col3...]

You can access them using array indices $row[0], $row[1].... You can see the order by either looking at the order of columns in the database or seeing what it is in the print_r. Then you can just echo it out in the order you want.