Returning an array of objects form a database in PHP

Question

I am having a huge issue writing out this function to connect to he database return an array of objects and then do an action on those object.

I am using PostgreSQL. I have consulted the documentation for PostgreSQL and PHP as well as looked at other code co-workers have done in a similar vein and I cannot get this to work

<?php
// Connect to database
$conn_string = "host=HOST port=PORT dbname=DATABASE user=USERNAME password=PASSWORD";
$dbconnect = pg_connect ($conn_string) or die ('Could not connect: ' . pg_last_error());

    // Get all emails
    function sanitizeEmail() {
        $sql =  "SELECT u.user_acct_nbr,
                        u.updt_ts,
                        u.email_id,
                        u.first_nm,
                        u.last_nm,
                        u.btn,
                        u.user_pin,
                        u.login,
                        u.last_login_ts
                   FROM user_account AS u
                   WHERE u.email_id IS NOT NULL
                   LIMIT 5";

        $result = pg_query($sql) or die('Query failed: ' . pg_last_error());


        $emails = array();
        while ( ($row = pg_fetch_object($result) ) !== false) {
            $key = $row->email_id;
            if (!array_key_exists($key, $emails)) {
                $accountObject = array();
                $accountObject["accountNumber"] = $row->user_acct_nbr;
                $accountObject["lastUpdated"] = $row->updt_ts;
                $accountObject["firstName"] = $row->first_nm;
                $accountObject["lastName"] = $row->last_nm;
                $accountObject["btn"] = $row->btn;
                $accountObject["pin"] = $row->user_pin;
                $accountObject["login"] = $row->login;
                $accountObject["lastLogin"] = $row->last_login_ts;
                $accountObject["email"] = $row->email_id;
                $emails[$key][] = $accountObject;
            }
        }

        foreach ($emails as $key => $email) {
            print_r($email); // Trying to see my returned results

            if(filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL) !==false) {
                // invalid address
                echo "invalid";
            } else {
                // valid address... continue
                echo "valid";
            }
        }

        pg_free_result($result);
        pg_close();
    }

sanitizeEmail();

?>

While I realize the code below is marked as JSON I did that because the JSON syntax highlighting in the forums works better.

with my print_r($email) statment I was expecting something like

{
    [1] : {
        userAccount : "####",
        lastUpdated : "####",
        firstName   : "John",
        lastName    : "Doe",
        btn         : "###-###-####",
        userPin     : "####",
        login       : "XXXXXX",
        email       : "xxx@example.com"
    },
    [2] : {
        userAccount : "####",
        lastUpdated : "####",
        firstName   : "Jane",
        lastName    : "Doe",
        btn         : "###-###-####",
        userPin     : "####",
        login       : "XXXXXX",
        email       : "xxx2@example.com"
    },
    [3] : {
        userAccount : "####",
        lastUpdated : "####",
        firstName   : "Jim",
        lastName    : "Doe",
        btn         : "###-###-####",
        userPin     : "####",
        login       : "XXXXXX",
        email       : "xxx3@example.com"
    }

}

Instead I get

Array ( [0] => Array ( [accountNumber] => [lastUpdated] => [firstName] => [lastName] => [btn] => [pin] => [login] => [lastLogin] => [email] => ) )

Answer 1 · 2015-08-08T10:52:29Z

August 8, 2015 10:52am

I don't know if this will help you at all, but I had a similar project a while ago. For part of the plugin, I needed to put an array into a variable, then echo it for each user on the database. I'll try to write a very condensed version of the code I wrote for a part of the plugin. It echos the description for each user on the database. The result looks exactly like you'd want it to.

<?php

//This gets the info
$query = mysqli_query($conn, "SELECT `meta_value` as 'value' FROM `{$userMeta_conn}` WHERE `meta_key` = 'description'") or die(mysqli_error($conn));

//This loops while putting the info into a variable, thus filling in the array
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($query)) {
    $description[] = $row["value"];
}

//Now let's echo the descriptions.
$i = 0;
while($i <= $user_count-1) {
echo $description[$i];
$i++;
}

?>

By the way, I fetched how many users exist on the database and put that number into the #user_count variable (although I didn't include that code here). The result of the code above will echo the user description for each user and stop running when there are no more users to find in the database.

I hope this helps!

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John Weland

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Returning an array of objects form a database in PHP

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Chris Andruszko

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