What is the difference between using SELECT DISTINCT and array_unique() to eliminate duplicate entries in a MySQL query result?

When retrieving data from a MySQL database, you may encounter duplicate entries in the result set. To eliminate these duplicates, you can use the SQL query `SELECT DISTINCT` to retrieve only unique rows. Another approach is to fetch all rows and then use the PHP function `array_unique()` to remove duplicate entries from the resulting array. 

// Using SELECT DISTINCT in SQL query
$sql = "SELECT DISTINCT column_name FROM table_name";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $sql);

// Using array_unique() in PHP
$rows = [];
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    $rows[] = $row['column_name'];
}

$unique_rows = array_unique($rows);

Keywords

PHP MySQL SELECT DISTINCT array_unique() duplicate entries

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