php variables in the Set clause of mysql UPDATE

[theninjasquad]

hey,
So youve got your typical UPDATE statement, UPDATE Table SET column = 'data'. What im wondering is if its possible to have the column aspect of that to be a php variable? I've been trying this but nothing seems to happen, and I dont get any error, so I think the code just recognizes it as a string, not as the value of the variable. I tried to echo the variable to see if that would work, but then I got a parse error. Anyone have any other ideas? any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!!

[Till]

Originally Posted by theninjasquad

hey,
So youve got your typical UPDATE statement, UPDATE Table SET column = 'data'. What im wondering is if its possible to have the column aspect of that to be a php variable? I've been trying this but nothing seems to happen, and I dont get any error, so I think the code just recognizes it as a string, not as the value of the variable. I tried to echo the variable to see if that would work, but then I got a parse error. Anyone have any other ideas? any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!!

Share your code snippet so people see what you are doing.

[theninjasquad]

okay heres the code:

mysql_query("UPDATE PL0105 SET $column = '$key' WHERE IDString = '$ID'", $db) or die(mysql_error());

I tried changing the $column to be <?php echo $column ?> instead, but I get a parse error still. I think it might be because my main code is in php brackets already, and I'm trying to add php brackets into that. But i dont see any other way around it... any ideas?

[Till]

Try this:

$query = sprintf(
  "UPDATE PL0105 SET %s = '%s' WHERE IDString = '%s'",
  $column,
  $key,
  $ID
  );
echo "Query: $query";
mysql_query($query, $db) or die(mysql_error());

[theninjasquad]

omg thank you sooooo so much!!!!!!