In what situations should the 'SELECT *' statement be avoided in PHP MySQL queries, and what alternative approaches can be taken?

The 'SELECT *' statement should be avoided in PHP MySQL queries when you only need specific columns from a table, as it can retrieve unnecessary data and impact performance. Instead, you should explicitly specify the columns you want to retrieve in the SELECT statement to improve query efficiency. 

// Avoid using SELECT * and explicitly specify the columns needed
$sql = "SELECT column1, column2 FROM table_name WHERE condition = 'value'";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $sql);

if (mysqli_num_rows($result) > 0) {
    while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
        // Process the retrieved data
    }
} else {
    echo "No results found";
}

Keywords

SELECT * PHP MySQL performance optimization

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