Question

I’m trying to write my MySQL query, but I’m stuck on this – I have multiple queries from my php to the SQL database:

SET @var := SELECT MAX(first_column)
    FROM table;

SELECT @var, 
    table.second_column
FROM table;

But it returns SQL error. When I use it in phpmyadmin, it works fine. I’ve googled and I saw people use “SET @var = MySQL query” only in stored procedures. Is it possible to use it the way I want?

Answer 1

If you are running multiple queries (i.e., you have a ; in your query), you either need to run it as two separate queries, or use a command like mysqli_multi_query. The mysql_query command can only run a single query at a time.

mysql_query('SET @VAR := SELECT MAX(first_column) FROM TABLE');
mysql_query('SELECT @var, table.second_column FROM table');

See also this related question.