PHP PDO Returning Single Row

In PHP, PDO (PHP Data Objects) is a powerful database abstraction layer that provides a consistent interface for interacting with multiple databases. When working with databases, it is often necessary to retrieve data from tables. In some cases, we may need to retrieve a single row of data from a table. In this article, we will discuss how to use PHP PDO to retrieve a single row of data from a database table.

Steps for Retrieving a Single Row of Data from a Database Table

Step 1: Establish a connection to the database

To retrieve a single row of data from a database table, we need to establish a connection to the database using PDO. The following code shows how to connect to a database using PDO:

// Create a new PDO connection
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase', 'username', 'password');

In the above code, replace mydatabase, username, and password with your actual database name, username, and password.

Step 2: Prepare the SQL query

Once we have established a connection to the database, we need to prepare the SQL query. We can use the SELECT statement to retrieve data from a table. In this case, we want to retrieve a single row of data, so we will use the LIMIT clause to limit the number of rows returned by the query. The following code shows how to prepare a SQL query to retrieve a single row of data from a table:

// Prepare the SQL query
$sql = "SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE id = ? LIMIT 1";
$stmt = $pdo->prepare($sql);
$stmt->execute([$id]);

In the above code, replace mytable with the name of your table, and id with the name of the column that contains the unique identifier for the row you want to retrieve. The ? placeholder is used to bind the value of the id variable to the query at runtime.

Step 3: Fetch the results

Once we have prepared the SQL query, we can execute it and fetch the results. Since we are retrieving a single row of data, we can use the fetch() method to fetch the first row of the result set. The following code shows how to fetch a single row of data from a database table:

// Fetch the results
$result = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);

In the above code, the PDO::FETCH_ASSOC constant is used to fetch the results as an associative array. This means that the keys of the array will be the column names of the table, and the values will be the corresponding values for the row we are retrieving.

Conclusion

In this article, we have discussed how to use PHP PDO to retrieve a single row of data from a database table. We have covered the steps for establishing a connection to the database, preparing the SQL query, and fetching the results. With this knowledge, you can easily retrieve a single row of data from any database table using PDO.