PHP MySQL WHERE Clause

In this tutorial you will learn how to select the records from a MySQL database table based on specific conditions using PHP.

Filtering the Records

The WHERE clause is used to extract only those records that fulfill a specified condition.

The basic syntax of the WHERE clause can be given with:

SELECT column_name(s) FROM table_name WHERE column_name operator value

Let's make a SQL query using the WHERE clause in SELECT statement, after that we'll execute this query through passing it to the PHP mysqli_query() function to get the filtered data.

Consider we've a persons table inside the demo database that has following records:

+----+------------+-----------+----------------------+
| id | first_name | last_name | email                |
+----+------------+-----------+----------------------+
|  1 | Peter      | Parker    | [email protected] |
|  2 | John       | Rambo     | [email protected]   |
|  3 | Clark      | Kent      | [email protected]   |
|  4 | John       | Carter    | [email protected]  |
|  5 | Harry      | Potter    | [email protected] |
+----+------------+-----------+----------------------+

The following PHP code selects all the rows from the persons table where first_name='john':

Example

Procedural Object Oriented PDO

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<?php
/* Attempt MySQL server connection. Assuming you are running MySQL
server with default setting (user 'root' with no password) */
$link = mysqli_connect("localhost", "root", "", "demo");
 
// Check connection
if($link === false){
    die("ERROR: Could not connect. " . mysqli_connect_error());
}
 
// Attempt select query execution
$sql = "SELECT * FROM persons WHERE first_name='john'";
if($result = mysqli_query($link, $sql)){
    if(mysqli_num_rows($result) > 0){
        echo "<table>";
            echo "<tr>";
                echo "<th>id</th>";
                echo "<th>first_name</th>";
                echo "<th>last_name</th>";
                echo "<th>email</th>";
            echo "</tr>";
        while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result)){
            echo "<tr>";
                echo "<td>" . $row['id'] . "</td>";
                echo "<td>" . $row['first_name'] . "</td>";
                echo "<td>" . $row['last_name'] . "</td>";
                echo "<td>" . $row['email'] . "</td>";
            echo "</tr>";
        }
        echo "</table>";
        // Close result set
        mysqli_free_result($result);
    } else{
        echo "No records matching your query were found.";
    }
} else{
    echo "ERROR: Could not able to execute $sql. " . mysqli_error($link);
}
 
// Close connection
mysqli_close($link);
?>

<?php
/* Attempt MySQL server connection. Assuming you are running MySQL
server with default setting (user 'root' with no password) */
$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "root", "", "demo");
 
// Check connection
if($mysqli === false){
    die("ERROR: Could not connect. " . $mysqli->connect_error);
}
 
// Attempt select query execution
$sql = "SELECT * FROM persons WHERE first_name='john'";
if($result = $mysqli->query($sql)){
    if($result->num_rows > 0){
        echo "<table>";
            echo "<tr>";
                echo "<th>id</th>";
                echo "<th>first_name</th>";
                echo "<th>last_name</th>";
                echo "<th>email</th>";
            echo "</tr>";
        while($row = $result->fetch_array()){
            echo "<tr>";
                echo "<td>" . $row['id'] . "</td>";
                echo "<td>" . $row['first_name'] . "</td>";
                echo "<td>" . $row['last_name'] . "</td>";
                echo "<td>" . $row['email'] . "</td>";
            echo "</tr>";
        }
        echo "</table>";
        // Free result set
        $result->free();
    } else{
        echo "No records matching your query were found.";
    }
} else{
    echo "ERROR: Could not able to execute $sql. " . $mysqli->error;
}
 
// Close connection
$mysqli->close();
?>

<?php
/* Attempt MySQL server connection. Assuming you are running MySQL
server with default setting (user 'root' with no password) */
try{
    $pdo = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=demo", "root", "");
    // Set the PDO error mode to exception
    $pdo->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
} catch(PDOException $e){
    die("ERROR: Could not connect. " . $e->getMessage());
}
 
// Attempt select query execution
try{
    $sql = "SELECT * FROM persons WHERE first_name='john'";  
    $result = $pdo->query($sql);
    if($result->rowCount() > 0){
        echo "<table>";
            echo "<tr>";
                echo "<th>id</th>";
                echo "<th>first_name</th>";
                echo "<th>last_name</th>";
                echo "<th>email</th>";
            echo "</tr>";
        while($row = $result->fetch()){
            echo "<tr>";
                echo "<td>" . $row['id'] . "</td>";
                echo "<td>" . $row['first_name'] . "</td>";
                echo "<td>" . $row['last_name'] . "</td>";
                echo "<td>" . $row['email'] . "</td>";
            echo "</tr>";
        }
        echo "</table>";
        // Free result set
        unset($result);
    } else{
        echo "No records matching your query were found.";
    }
} catch(PDOException $e){
    die("ERROR: Could not able to execute $sql. " . $e->getMessage());
}
 
// Close connection
unset($pdo);
?>

After filtration the result set will look something like this:

+----+------------+-----------+---------------------+
| id | first_name | last_name | email               |
+----+------------+-----------+---------------------+
|  2 | John       | Rambo     | [email protected]  |
|  4 | John       | Carter    | [email protected] |
+----+------------+-----------+---------------------+

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PHP MySQL WHERE Clause

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