Question

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How to fetch result from MySQL row with multiple same-name columns with PHP?

I have two tables, and they share similar column names.

Query is:

SELECT a.name,b.name
FROM tablea a 
JOIN tableb b ON a.id = b.id

Results are put into an array:

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($results)){
   $aname = $row['name'];
}

Once I added in that second table I noticed the $aname was using tableb’s data.

Question(s): How can I store both name columns, $row['a.name'] does not work. My guess is maybe I need to alias each result in the query. Any suggestions? Should I same avoid giving the column names in the future?

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I know mysql_* is deprecated. Save your energy.

Answer 1

Your guess was right. You need to create an ALIAS for the columns so you can fetch it uniquely,

SELECT a.name Name1, b.name Name2
FROM tablea a 
JOIN tableb b ON a.id = b.id

then you can now call

$row['Name1']