Question

This code prints out a list of column names. But I would expect it to print out the information stored in the UserName table for the user with the LoginName of JSmith.

 $loginname = "JSmith";
 $stmt = $dbh->prepare("SELECT * FROM UserName WHERE LoginName=:login_name");
 $stmt->bindValue(":login_name", $login_name, PDO::PARAM_STR);
 $stmt->execute();

echo "<table><tr>";
$result = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
 print_r($result);
foreach ($result as $key => $val){
    echo "<th>" . $key . "</th>";   
}
echo "</tr>";
echo "</table>";

Why doesn’t this return the row with the users name? Looking at echo gettype($result) shows me that they are strings and integers; not like each piece of the returned array is itself an array. I’m sure it’s a simple thing, but any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

You’re printing the keys, not the values. The keys are the column names, and the values are the corresponding column values.

print_r($result) shows that $stmt->fetch() returns an array with the information you expect, and the corresponding HTML simply doesn’t reflect that.

http://php.net/manual/en/pdostatement.fetch.php#example-1018

Let’s fix it.

$result = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
print_r($result);
foreach ($result as $key => $val){
    echo "<th>" . $key . "</th>";
    echo "<td>" . $val . "</td>";
}
echo "</tr>";
echo "</table>";