What are the potential pitfalls of using the * wildcard in a MySQL query in PHP?

Using the * wildcard in a MySQL query can potentially retrieve more data than needed, leading to increased server load and slower performance. It is best practice to explicitly specify the columns needed in the SELECT statement to avoid these issues. 

// Specify the columns needed in the SELECT statement instead of using the * wildcard
$sql = "SELECT column1, column2 FROM table_name WHERE condition = 'value'";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $sql);

// Use the fetched data
while($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    // Process the data here
}

Keywords

wildcard MySQL query PHP potential pitfalls error types

Related Questions