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Alex Lungu
Alex Lungu

Reputation: 1114

PHP: Get values from a column using its name

Is it possible to get all the values from a database knowing the name of the column? I have a database like this: The day of the week using a code number and some rows with information for each day. When the user asks it, I want to send all the info from that certain day.

id      1         2         3

1       Info    Info     Info
2       Info    Info     Info

Until now I have this: 

 // I know the know of the column and I want to compare it with the week code 
 //   of today so they can get the info for today
        $day=date(w);
        $conn = mysqlConnector();
        $cols = $conn->prepare('SELECT * FROM cond WHERE COLUMN_NAME = :col LIMIT 1000 OFFSET 1');
        $cols->execute(array('col'=> $day));

I'm not sure if I should use COLUMN_NAME or how to use it, but this code doesn't work. Any idea? Thank you all

Upvotes: 1

Views: 70

Answers (1)

O. Jones
O. Jones

Reputation: 108651

You can't use column names as SQL bind variables.

It's not clear from your question what your column names are. Edit They seem to be 1, 2, etc.

You could use a SQL statement something like this:

SELECT `1` FROM cond LIMIT 1000 OFFSET 1

To do this in php, you need to do something like this to create your query with 

`1`

inserted into it as a literal.

$day = 1;
...
$cols = $conn->prepare("SELECT `$day` 
                          FROM cond 
                         WHERE COLUMN_NAME = :col
                         LIMIT 1000 OFFSET 1");
$cols->execute();

You should be careful with this; make sure the value of $day can't get corrupted by a malicious user.

You should also be careful to make sure your column names, which happen to be integers, are surrounded by backticks: 

SELECT 1 FROM cond

will give back a sequence of 1s, but 

SELECT `1` FROM cond

will give back your data.

Upvotes: 2

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