Question

somewhere I’m doing something wrong, my query results to true instead of false. In my table the id 246 does exist but the lev is zero in the table. What am I doing wrong, this query should result to false. It echo’s success but it does not update the table.

if (mysql_query("UPDATE ex_usrs SET lev = '1' WHERE id = '246' AND lev = '3'")) {
echo "success";
} else {
echo "fail";
}

Answer 1

From docs:

For SELECT, SHOW, DESCRIBE, EXPLAIN and other statements returning
resultset, mysql_query() returns a resource on success, or FALSE on
error.

For other type of SQL statements, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, DROP, etc,
mysql_query() returns TRUE on success or FALSE on error.

The returned result resource should be passed to mysql_fetch_array(),
and other functions for dealing with result tables, to access the
returned data.

Use mysql_num_rows() to find out how many rows were returned for a
SELECT statement or mysql_affected_rows() to find out how many rows
were affected by a DELETE, INSERT, REPLACE, or UPDATE statement.

Don’t use mysql_query to check if you really did update some rows. Use mysql_affected_rows() instead.