Using arbitrarily named php variable

Question

My objective is to extract each value of 3 columns of a SQL table. Although, I want to extract these values from different tables deppending on the value of listtype that is chosen. The columns Name and Reg_Date have the same name for all the tables. Although, the name of the column corresponding to ID may be either ID_Doctor, ID_Nurse or ID_Patient. How can I append $POST['listtype'] to $ID and be able to use it inside an echo? Below is the code that I tried, although the echo always returns the string ID_Doctor, ID_Nurse, or ID_Patient, deppending on the value of $_POST['listtype'].

$ID = '$ID_' .$_POST['listtype'];

while($count < $pages_c)
{
  while ($rows = mysql_fetch_array($results)) 
  { 
    extract($rows); 
    $numrows++;
    echo "<tr><td>$ID</td><td>$Name</td><td>$Reg_Date</td></tr>";
  }
$count++;
}

Community · Accepted Answer · 2023-11-17 20:33:26Z

4

You can use variable variables to accomplish that.

echo "<tr><td>${$ID}</td><td>$Name</td><td>$Reg_Date</td></tr>";

Keep in mind that you do not need to use extract to get the values from your $rows array. You could read them directly using $rows['key'] syntax.

while ($rows = mysql_fetch_array($results)) 
{ 
    $numrows++;
    echo "<tr><td>{$rows[$ID]}</td><td>{$rows['Name']}</td><td>{$rows['Reg_Date']}</td></tr>";
}

Side note: mysql_* functions are deprecated as of PHP 5.5 and will be removed in the future. I'd recommend you to stick with MySQLi or PDO instead.

edited Nov 17, 2023 at 20:33

CommunityBot

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answered Nov 19, 2013 at 15:57

Guilherme Sehn

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Comments

cske · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-19 15:54:46Z

0

echo "<tr><td>",$rows[$ID],"</td><td>$Name</td><td>$Reg_Date</td></tr>";

answered Nov 19, 2013 at 15:54

cske

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