Which PHP functions are used in the PHP script to fetch data from an existing MySQL table?

PHP provides several functions to fetch data from an existing MySQL table. The most commonly used functions are mysql_query() for executing SQL queries and mysql_fetch_array() for retrieving rows from the result set.

mysql_query() Function

This function executes an SQL query against a MySQL database and returns a result resource on success or FALSE on failure ?

Syntax

bool mysql_query( sql, connection );

Parameters

mysql_fetch_array() Function

This function retrieves a row from the result set and returns it as an associative array, numeric array, or both. It returns FALSE when there are no more rows ?

Syntax

mysql_fetch_array(result, resulttype);

Parameters

Example

Here's how to use these functions together to fetch data from a MySQL table ?

<?php
    // Establish database connection
    $connection = mysql_connect("localhost", "username", "password");
    mysql_select_db("database_name", $connection);
    
    // Execute SQL query
    $query = "SELECT id, name, email FROM users";
    $result = mysql_query($query, $connection);
    
    // Fetch and display data
    while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
        echo "ID: " . $row['id'] . "<br>";
        echo "Name: " . $row['name'] . "<br>";
        echo "Email: " . $row['email'] . "<br><br>";
    }
    
    // Close connection
    mysql_close($connection);
?>

Conclusion

Note: The mysql_* functions are deprecated as of PHP 5.5.0 and removed in PHP 7.0.0. Use MySQLi or PDO for new projects instead.