Question

I’m using PHP to access a MYSQL database and I’m needing to extract data from a table. The problem is that there is only one field to be fetched.

 $mysqli = new mysqli($hostname, $username, $password, $db_name);

        // Output error info if there was a connection problem
        if ($mysqli->connect_errno)
            die("Failed to connect to MySQL: ($mysqli->connect_errno) $mysqli->connect_error");

        $db = "SELECT username1 FROM Friends WHERE username2 = '"."$username"."' UNION SELECT username2 FROM Friends WHERE username1 = '"."$username"."'";

        $result = $mysqli->query($db) or
            die ("Wasn't able to search the database");

        while($result->fetch_field($row))
        {
            echo "<h1> $row </h1>";
        }

I guarantee that I am connected to my database. I also used $result->fetch_field() instead of $row in the parentheses. My main problem is that fetch_field returns an object but in all of the manuals on PHP they don’t say how you extract the actual value that the field has.

Answer 1

Are you sure that your variable $username in your query is what you expect it to be? Your SELECT could be returning 0 rows.

You are using $username twice in your code.
First in your mysqli–

$mysqli = new mysqli($hostname, $username, $password, $db_name);
                                --------- 

And again in your SELECT –

$db = "SELECT username1 FROM Friends WHERE username2 = '"."$username"."' UNION SELECT username2 FROM Friends WHERE username1 = '"."$username"."'";
                                                           ---------                                                               ---------

Try adding

if ($result->num_rows > 0){
  while ($row = $result->fetch_row()) {
  echo "<h1>".$row[0]."</h1>";}
}
else {echo "No Query / Returned 0 Rows";}