What is the significance of using ORDER BY in MySQL queries when fetching data in PHP?

When fetching data from a MySQL database in PHP, using the ORDER BY clause allows you to specify the order in which the results should be returned. This is important when you want to display the data in a specific order, such as alphabetically or by date. Without using ORDER BY, the results may be returned in a random order, making it difficult to present the data in a meaningful way. 

// Connect to MySQL database
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "database";

$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

// Fetch data from database ordered by a specific column
$sql = "SELECT * FROM table_name ORDER BY column_name";
$result = $conn->query($sql);

// Display the results
if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
    while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
        echo "Column 1: " . $row["column1"] . " - Column 2: " . $row["column2"] . "<br>";
    }
} else {
    echo "0 results";
}

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

Keywords

PHP MySQL ORDER BY data fetching significance

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