PHP Tutorials

Display records from MySQL

quote_id	quote	auth_fn	auth_mn	auth_ln	subject
1	I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think.	Anne		Sullivan	education
2	Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.	Arthur		Koestler	education
3	Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.	Edward		Everett	education
4	Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.	Albert		Einstein	education

display_records.php

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>Display my Quotes</title>
<style type="text/css">

</style>
</head>

<body>
<div id="container">

<?
include("my_connection.php");

$myQuery = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM my_quotes LIMIT 0, 10") or die (mysql_error());
while($myRow = mysql_fetch_object($myQuery))
{
echo "<div class='quote'>" . $myRow -> quote . "</div>";
echo "<div class='author'>" . $myRow -> auth_fn . " " . $myRow -> auth_mn . " ". $myRow -> auth_ln . "</div>";
}
?>

</div>
</body>
</html>

my_connection.php

<?php
mysql_connect("your-mySQL-server.yourdomain.com","your-user-name","your-password") or die ("your own error message");
mysql_select_db ("your-database-name") or die ("your own error message");
?>

About the include file

An include command adds content of the external file on the current page. If you'd rather have a connection with your database on every page, just replace the include line with the content of the external file, for example:

<?
mysql_connect("your-mySQL-server.yourdomain.com", "your-user-name", "your-password") or die ("your own error message");
mysql_select_db ("your-database-name") or die ("your own error message");

$myQuery = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM my_quotes LIMIT 0, 10") or die (mysql_error());
while($myRow = mysql_fetch_object($myQuery))
{
echo "<div>" . $myRow -> quote . "</div>";
echo "<div>" . $myRow -> auth_fn . " " . $myRow -> auth_mn . " ". $myRow -> auth_ln . "</div>";
}
?>

About error messages

If there is an error connecting to the database you can show your own message, or the error message from MySQL server. The error message from the server is mysql_error() and the custom error message is written between quotes like this "this is my error message"

I'd advise you to use "your own error message" for the production server. The visitor doesn' t need (or care) to know errors in your code:

<?php
mysql_connect("your-mySQL-server.yourdomain.com", "your-user-name", "your-password") or die ("your own error message");
mysql_select_db ("your-database-name") or die ("your own error message");
?>

Use mysql_error() for the testing server. You have to know what these errors are:

<?php
mysql_connect("your-mySQL-server.yourdomain.com", "your-user-name", "your-password") or die (mysql_error());
mysql_select_db ("your-database-name") or die (mysql_error());
?>

You can also combine error messages:

<?php
mysql_connect("your-mySQL-server.yourdomain.com", "your-user-name", "your-password") or die ("Sorry, there is an error" . mysql_error());
mysql_select_db ("your-database-name") or die ("your own error message");
?>

The dot . is used in PHP the same as ampersand & in ASP or plus + in JavaScript.

Hiding all errors on the page

Another method of hiding all error messages is the following code:

<?php
ini_set('error_reporting', E_ALL | E_STRICT);
ini_set('display_errors', 'Off');
?>

You can add the code above on the top of your PHP page, above everything else, above the HTML code:

<?php
ini_set('error_reporting', E_ALL | E_STRICT);
ini_set('display_errors', 'Off');
?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>

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