Are there any best practices for querying a database with variable column names in PHP?

When querying a database with variable column names in PHP, one best practice is to use prepared statements with placeholders for the column names. This allows for dynamic querying without risking SQL injection attacks. Another approach is to fetch the column names from the database schema and dynamically construct the SQL query based on the retrieved column names. 

// Assuming $columnName is the variable column name
$columnName = "column_name"; // Example variable column name

// Using prepared statements with placeholders
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE $columnName = :value");
$stmt->bindParam(':value', $value);
$stmt->execute();

// Using dynamic column names from database schema
$query = "SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE ";
$columns = $pdo->query("SHOW COLUMNS FROM table_name")->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_COLUMN);
foreach ($columns as $column) {
    $query .= $column . " = :value OR ";
}
$query = rtrim($query, "OR ");
$stmt = $pdo->prepare($query);
$stmt->bindParam(':value', $value);
$stmt->execute();

Keywords

dynamic SQL prepared statements PDO mysqli column binding

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