CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpmysqlsqlstringvariables
Pinkie
Pinkie

Reputation: 10256

How to include a PHP variable inside a MySQL statement

I'm trying to insert values in the contents table. It works fine if I do not have a PHP variable inside VALUES. When I put the variable $type inside VALUES then this doesn't work. What am I doing wrong?

$type = 'testing';
mysql_query("INSERT INTO contents (type, reporter, description) 
     VALUES($type, 'john', 'whatever')");

Upvotes: 84

Views: 461769

Answers (5)

Baloomba
Baloomba

Reputation: 77

This is the easy answer:

$query="SELECT * FROM CountryInfo WHERE Name = '".$name."'";

You can define $name whatever you want.

Another, more complex way is like this:

$query = " SELECT '" . $GLOBALS['Name'] . "' .* " .
         " FROM CountryInfo " .
         " INNER JOIN District " .
         " ON District.CountryInfoId = CountryInfo.CountryInfoId " .
         " INNER JOIN City " .
         " ON City.DistrictId = District.DistrictId " .
         " INNER JOIN '" . $GLOBALS['Name'] . "' " .
         " ON '" . $GLOBALS['Name'] . "'.CityId = City.CityId " .
         " WHERE CountryInfo.Name = '" . $GLOBALS['CountryName'] .
         "'";

Upvotes: 2

Your Common Sense
Your Common Sense

Reputation: 158005

The rules of adding a PHP variable inside of any MySQL statement are plain and simple:

1. Use prepared statements

This rule covers 99% of queries and your query in particular. Any variable that represents an SQL data literal, (or, to put it simply - an SQL string, or a number) MUST be added through a prepared statement. No exceptions. A constant value can be put as is.

This approach involves four basic steps

  • in your SQL statement, replace all variables with placeholders
  • prepare the resulting query
  • bind variables to placeholders
  • execute the query

And here is how to do it with all popular PHP database drivers:

Adding data literals using mysqli

Starting from PHP 8.2 you can do the entire prepare/bind/execute sequence in one call:

$type = 'testing';
$reporter = "John O'Hara";
$sql = "INSERT INTO contents (type,reporter,description) VALUES ('whatever',?,?)";
$mysqli->execute_query($sql, [$reporter, $description]);

If your PHP version is old, then prepare/bind/execute has to be done explicitly:

$type = 'testing';
$reporter = "John O'Hara";
$sql = "INSERT INTO contents (type,reporter,description) VALUES ('whatever',?,?)";
$stmt = $mysqli->prepare($sql);
$stmt->bind_param("ss", $reporter, $description);
$stmt->execute();

The code is a bit complicated but the detailed explanation of all these operators can be found in my article, How to run an INSERT query using Mysqli, as well as a solution that eases the process dramatically.

For a SELECT query you can use the same method as above:

$reporter = "John O'Hara";
$result = $mysqli->execute_query("SELECT * FROM users WHERE name=?", [$reporter]);
$row = $result->fetch_assoc(); // or while (...)

but again, if your PHP version is old, you will need to go through prepare/bind/execute routine and also add a call to get_result() method, in order to get a familiar mysqli_result from which you can fetch the data the usual way:

$reporter = "John O'Hara";
$stmt = $mysqli->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE name=?");
$stmt->bind_param("s", $reporter);
$stmt->execute();
$result = $stmt->get_result();
$row = $result->fetch_assoc(); // or while (...)
Adding data literals using PDO
$type = 'testing';
$reporter = "John O'Hara";
$sql = "INSERT INTO contents (type,reporter,description) VALUES ('whatever',?,?)";
$stmt = $pdo->prepare($sql);
$stmt->execute([$reporter, $description]);

In PDO, we can have the bind and execute parts combined, which is very convenient. PDO also supports named placeholders which some find extremely convenient.

2. Use white list filtering

Any other query part, such as SQL keyword, table or a field name, or operator - must be filtered through a white list.

Sometimes we have to add a variable that represents another part of a query, such as a keyword or an identifier (a database, table or a field name). It's a rare case but it's better to be prepared.

In this case, your variable must be checked against a list of values explicitly written in your script. This is explained in my other article, Adding a field name in the ORDER BY clause based on the user's choice:

Unfortunately, PDO has no placeholder for identifiers (table and field names), therefore a developer must filter them out manually. Such a filter is often called a "white list" (where we only list allowed values) as opposed to a "black-list" where we list disallowed values.

So we have to explicitly list all possible variants in the PHP code and then choose from them.

Here is an example:

$orderby = $_GET['orderby'] ?: "name"; // set the default value
$allowed = ["name","price","qty"]; // the white list of allowed field names
$key = array_search($orderby, $allowed, true); // see if we have such a name
if ($key === false) { 
    throw new InvalidArgumentException("Invalid field name"); 
}

Exactly the same approach should be used for the direction,

$direction = $_GET['direction'] ?: "ASC";
$allowed = ["ASC","DESC"];
$key = array_search($direction, $allowed, true);
if ($key === false) { 
    throw new InvalidArgumentException("Invalid ORDER BY direction"); 
}

After such a code, both $direction and $orderby variables can be safely put in the SQL query, as they are either equal to one of the allowed variants or there will be an error thrown.

The last thing to mention about identifiers, they must be also formatted according to the particular database syntax. For MySQL it should be backtick characters around the identifier. So the final query string for our order by example would be

$query = "SELECT * FROM `table` ORDER BY `$orderby` $direction";

Upvotes: 136

Stefan
Stefan

Reputation: 197

To avoid SQL injection the insert statement with be

$type = 'testing';
$name = 'john';
$description = 'whatever';

$con = new mysqli($user, $pass, $db);
$stmt = $con->prepare("INSERT INTO contents (type, reporter, description) VALUES (?, ?, ?)");
$stmt->bind_param("sss", $type , $name, $description);
$stmt->execute();

Upvotes: 10

Tel
Tel

Reputation: 424

The best option is prepared statements. Messing around with quotes and escapes is harder work to begin with, and difficult to maintain. Sooner or later you will end up accidentally forgetting to quote something or end up escaping the same string twice, or mess up something like that. Might be years before you find those type of bugs.

http://php.net/manual/en/pdo.prepared-statements.php

Upvotes: 4

Spencer Rose
Spencer Rose

Reputation: 1230

The text inside $type is substituted directly into the insert string, therefore MySQL gets this:

... VALUES(testing, 'john', 'whatever')

Notice that there are no quotes around testing, you need to put these in like so:

$type = 'testing';
mysql_query("INSERT INTO contents (type, reporter, description) VALUES('$type', 'john', 'whatever')");

I also recommend you read up on SQL injection, as this sort of parameter passing is prone to hacking attempts if you do not sanitize the data being used:

Upvotes: 2

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