What is the purpose of the while loop in the PHP code provided?

The purpose of the while loop in the provided PHP code is to iterate over an array of data and perform a specific action for each element in the array. In this case, the while loop is used to fetch each row of data from a MySQL query result and process it accordingly. To fix any issues related to the while loop, it is important to ensure that the loop condition is properly set to iterate over all elements in the array.

// Fixing the while loop to properly iterate over the MySQL query result
$query = "SELECT * FROM table_name";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

if ($result) {
    while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
        // Process each row of data here
        echo $row['column_name'] . "<br>";
    }
} else {
    echo "Error executing query: " . mysqli_error($connection);
}