PDO delete specified row from table

Question

I have a little problem ... I am using PDO and part of my code is to delete a specific row from the table in my database. My code is the below ...

function deleteFromWorkWhere($db,$table,$user,$rowId){
        switch($table){
            case 'work':
                $tbl = 'work';
                break;
        }
        if($rowId=='all'){ // delete all records
            $sql = 'DELETE FROM '.$tbl.' WHERE username=?';  // "?"s here will get replaced with the array elements below
            $stmt = $db->prepare($sql);
            $stmt->execute(array($user)); // these array elements will replace the above "?"s in this same order
            // check for errors 
            if($stmt->errorCode() == 0) {
                // no errors, show alert and refresh page
                return '';
            } else {
                // had errors
                $errors = $stmt->errorInfo();
                return ''; 
            }
        }
        elseif($rowId){ // delete specified row 
            $sql = 'DELETE FROM '.$tbl.' WHERE username = ? AND id = ?';  // "?"s here will get replaced with the array elements below
            $stmt = $db->prepare($sql);
            $stmt->execute(array($user,$rowId)); // these array elements will replace the above "?"s in this same order
            $affected_rows = $stmt->rowCount(); // get the number of rows affected by this change
            return $affected_rows.' row deleted.';
            // check for errors 
            if($stmt->errorCode() == 0) {
                // no errors, show alert and refresh page
                return '';
            } else {
                // had errors
                $errors = $stmt->errorInfo();
                return '';  
            }
        }
        else{ /// return error
        }
    }   
    if(isset($_POST['clear_work'])){
            deleteFromWorkWhere($db,'work',$_SESSION['username'],'all');    
    }
    if(isset($_POST['clear_selected_work'])){
            deleteFromWorkWhere($db,'work',$_SESSION['username']);  
    }

The first if statement is used to delete ALL the data from the table and the else I want to use in order to delete a specific row, but it doesn't work, what am I doing wrong?

This is the button...

Wesley Smith · Accepted Answer

Actually no one here would really be able to answer this with just the code you show here. But @ultranaut and @devJunk both pretty much nailed it. When I originally wrote the the function for you, your form allowed a user to add records to the database and had a button to "Clear All Work History" but did not have a method of deleting individual records.

I wrote the function so that:

passing the string value 'all' as the $rowId parameter would delete all records ( which is wha the application needed)
passing a database row id as the $rowId parameter would delete just that specific row ( not needed at the time but made sense to add it )

Because you only had the one button at the time to delete everything, I only implemented that with this check:

if(isset($_POST['clear_work'])){
        // see explanation of params in function declaration above for `deleteFromWhere()`
        deleteFromWhere($db,'work',$_SESSION['username'],'all');    
}

If you want to delete a specific record, you'll need to do two things:

Add a button or similar on your first page that will delete an individual record.

Add a check in the second page to see if this button was pressed and call the function passing in the supplied id.

if(isset($_POST['clear_this_work'])){
        // see explanination of params in function declaration above for `deleteFromWhere()`
        deleteFromWhere($db,'work',$_SESSION['username'],$_POST['clear_this_work']);    
}

Final amended php:

// a function that deletes records 
// $table is the table to delete from
// $user is the current username
// $rowId is the row id of the record to be deleted
// if $rowId is passed as the string "all", 
// all matching records will be deleted 
function deleteFromWhere($db,$table,$user,$rowId){
    // PDO will sanitize most vars automatically
    // however Table and Column names cannot be replaced by parameters in PDO. 
    // In this case we will simply want to filter and sanitize the data manually.
    // By leaving no default case or using a default case that returns an error message you ensure that only values that you want used get used.
    // http://stackoverflow.com/questions/182287/can-php-pdo-statements-accept-the-table-name-as-parameter
    switch($table){
        case 'work':
            $tbl = 'work'; // add more here when you want to start deleting from other tables
            break;
    }
    if($rowId=='all'){ // delete all records
        $sql = 'DELETE FROM '.$tbl.' WHERE username=?';  // "?"s here will get replaced with the array elements below
        $stmt = $db->prepare($sql);
        $stmt->execute(array($user)); // these array elements will replace the above "?"s in this same order
        // check for errors 
        if($stmt->errorCode() == 0) {
            // no errors, show alert and refresh page
            return '';
        } else {
            // had errors
            $errors = $stmt->errorInfo();
            return '';  
        }
    }
    elseif($rowId){ // delete specified row 
        $sql = 'DELETE FROM '.$tbl.' WHERE username = ? AND id = ?';  // "?"s here will get replaced with the array elements below
        $stmt = $db->prepare($sql);
        $stmt->execute(array($user,$rowId)); // these array elements will replace the above "?"s in this same order
        $affected_rows = $stmt->rowCount(); // get the number of rows affected by this change
        return $affected_rows.' row deleted.';
        // check for errors 
        if($stmt->errorCode() == 0) {
            // no errors, show alert and refresh page
            return '';
        } else {
            // had errors
            $errors = $stmt->errorInfo();
            return '';   
        }
    }
    else{ /// return error
    }
}   


if(isset($_POST['clear_work'])){
        // see explanation of params in function declaration above for `deleteFromWhere()`
        deleteFromWhere($db,'work',$_SESSION['username'],'all');    
}

// add the below check 
if(isset($_POST['clear_this_work'])){
        // see explanination of params in function declaration above for `deleteFromWhere()`
        deleteFromWhere($db,'work',$_SESSION['username'],$_POST['clear_this_work']);    
}

PDO delete specified row from table

Answers (1)

Add a button or similar on your first page that will delete an individual record.

Add a check in the second page to see if this button was pressed and call the function passing in the supplied id.

Final amended php:

HTML:

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