What are the consequences of not specifying a clear criteria for selecting unique values from a database in PHP, and how can this impact the accuracy of the results?
When not specifying clear criteria for selecting unique values from a database in PHP, it can lead to inaccurate results as duplicate values may be included in the output. To ensure accuracy, it is important to define specific conditions or columns to filter out duplicates and retrieve only distinct values.
// Specify a clear criteria for selecting unique values from a database
$query = "SELECT DISTINCT column_name FROM table_name WHERE condition";
// Execute the query and fetch the results
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);
// Loop through the results
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
// Output or process the unique values
echo $row['column_name'];
}