Is it recommended to use pg_fetch to determine which rows have empty columns in PostgreSQL queries in PHP?

When working with PostgreSQL queries in PHP, it is not recommended to use pg_fetch to determine which rows have empty columns. Instead, it is better to handle this directly in the SQL query itself by using a WHERE clause to filter out rows with empty columns. This approach is more efficient and ensures that only the necessary data is retrieved from the database.

<?php
// Connect to the database
$conn = pg_connect("host=localhost dbname=mydb user=myuser password=mypass");

// Query to select rows with non-empty columns
$query = "SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE column_name IS NOT NULL AND column_name != ''";
$result = pg_query($conn, $query);

// Fetch and display the results
while ($row = pg_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    echo "Column value: " . $row['column_name'] . "<br>";
}

// Close the connection
pg_close($conn);
?>