note 39332 deleted from function.msql-fetch-array by didou

Note Submitter: dave at ddh web dot com ---- As a supplementary note, the 'extract' feature should be used with caution, because it imports the values into the 'current symbol table (see documentation on extract) This can create a problem if any of the field names you are extracting correspond to names of session variables. For instance, I would query the database for my 'member' table, which contains a field 'mem_type'...which is also the name of my session variable, called with $_SESSION['mem_type']...Whenever I would use the extract() function on this query, whatever came back for 'mem_type' would then be substituted into my session variable mem_type. This stumped me for about an hour, until I finally isolated it. The best solution is to write a function such as: function db_Select($input_query) { #returns an array of results based on query input #query the database $result = mysql_query($input_query) or die("Query failed : " . mysql_error()); #parse results into an array using mysql_fetch_array() $array = mysql_fetch_array($result); #free memory mysql_free_result($result); #return parsed array return $array; } You can place this function into the library of functions that you include or require for your database-related pages. Then you call the function like this: $sqlResults = db_Select("SELECT * FROM table_name") Now You can call any field from the table_name table with $sqlResults['fieldname']...no extract() required The extract function is not good for this use. I don't think it was designed for that and it certainly hung me up something fierce. Hope this helps.