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up vote 1 down vote favorite

Simplified version of the problem:

So I have this query which is inside a function.

$query = "SELECT * FROM users";
$result = mysql_query($query);

How I want to use mysql_fetch_object() to get an object from a row.

Because in the end I wanted to get an array of objects I do this:

while ($a[] = mysql_fetch_object($result)) { // empty here }

In the end the function just returns $a. And it works almost fine.

My problem is that mysql_fetch_object will return at the end a NULL "row" (which is normal because the result ended but I still assigned it to the array).

Any ideas on how to do this in a decent way? Thanks in advance.

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3 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

Or you could move the assignment from the while condition to the while body like:

<?php
while ($entry = mysql_fetch_object($result)) {
   $a[] = $entry;
}
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Simple and good. Thanks. – Valentin Despa May 30 '11 at 8:23
up vote 3 down vote

mysql_fetch_object actually returns FALSE if there are no more rows. I would do this:

$a = array();
while (($row = mysql_fetch_object($result)) !== FALSE) {
  $a[] = $row;
}
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!== FALSE is useless here ^^ – MatTheCat May 30 '11 at 9:10
I've always considered the type checking good practice when dealing with boolean return values in PHP. In this case it won't matter, but it numerous others, it most certainly does. It's a defensive programming practice, IMO. – John Hargrove Jun 1 '11 at 9:28
@MatTheCat right. and when it returns false the loop stops. – ShadeTreeDeveloper Mar 15 at 12:36
up vote 0 down vote

You can just add

array_pop($a);

after the while

http://php.net/manual/en/function.array-pop.php

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Not generally advised, but since this will always be there because that is the exit condition on the loop, this is a reasonable solution. I'd add a comment explaining why you are array_poping though. – Matthew Scharley May 30 '11 at 7:51
I'll keep this function in mind, it may be useful sometimes. – Valentin Despa May 30 '11 at 8:30

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