Question

I’m wondering how to query a database using an array, like so:

$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM status_updates WHERE member_id = '$friends['member_id']'");

$friends is an array which contains the member’s ID. I am trying to query the database and show all results where member_id is equal to one of the member’s ID in the $friends array.

Is there a way to do something like WHERE = $friends[member_id] or would I have to convert the array into a string and build the query like so:

$query = "";
foreach($friends as $friend){
  $query .= 'OR member_id = '.$friend[id.' ';
}
$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM status_updates WHERE member_id = '1' $query");

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Answer 1

You want IN.

SELECT * FROM status_updates WHERE member_id IN ('1', '2', '3');

So the code changes to:

$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM status_updates WHERE member_id IN ('" . implode("','", $friends) . "')");

Depending on where the data in the friends array comes from you many want to pass each value through mysql_real_escape_string() to make sure there are no SQL injections.