What are the best practices for comparing values from two tables in PHP and MySQL?

When comparing values from two tables in PHP and MySQL, it is best to use SQL JOIN queries to combine the tables based on a common key. This allows for efficient comparison of values between the two tables. Additionally, using PHP to fetch and process the results of the query can help in handling the data effectively.

<?php
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "database";

// Create connection
$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}

// SQL query to compare values from two tables
$sql = "SELECT table1.column1, table2.column2
        FROM table1
        JOIN table2 ON table1.common_key = table2.common_key";

$result = $conn->query($sql);

if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
    // Output data of each row
    while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
        echo "Column1: " . $row["column1"]. " - Column2: " . $row["column2"]. "<br>";
    }
} else {
    echo "0 results";
}

$conn->close();
?>