What is the purpose of using a while loop to fetch data from a database in PHP?

When fetching data from a database in PHP, using a while loop is essential to iterate through the result set returned by the database query. This loop allows you to fetch each row of data one by one until there are no more rows left to retrieve. By using a while loop, you can process each row individually and perform any necessary operations on the data. 

// Connect to the database
$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

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

// SQL query to fetch data from the database
$sql = "SELECT * FROM table_name";
$result = $conn->query($sql);

// Check if there are rows returned
if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
    // Output data of each row
    while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
        echo "ID: " . $row["id"]. " - Name: " . $row["name"]. "<br>";
    }
} else {
    echo "0 results";
}

// Close the database connection
$conn->close();

Keywords

while loop fetch data database PHP data retrieval

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