Page 442 - Beginning PHP 5.3

Part III: Using PHP in Practice
If you want to insert only some values, leaving NULL s or other default values in the remaining fields, use:

INSERT INTO table ( field1 , field2 , ... ) VALUES ( value1 , value2 , ... );

Though the first approach is compact, and perfectly valid if you want to populate all the fields in the
row, the second approach is generally more flexible and readable.
So how do you insert records using your PHP script? You pass INSERT statements to MySQL via PDO in
much the same way as you pass SELECT statements. If you don ’ t want to pass data from any PHP
variables, you can use the simpler PDO::query() method — for example:
< ?php
$dsn = “mysql:dbname=mydatabase”;
$username = “root”;
$password = “mypass”;

try {
$conn = new PDO( $dsn, $username, $password );
$conn- > setAttribute( PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION );
} catch ( PDOException $e ) {
echo “Connection failed: “ . $e- > getMessage();
}

$sql = “INSERT INTO members VALUES ( 8, ‘derek’, password(‘mypass’), ‘Derek’,
‘Winter’, ‘2008-06-25’, ‘m’, ‘crime’, ‘derek@example.com’, ‘Watching TV,
motor racing’ )”;

try {
$conn- > query( $sql );
} catch ( PDOException $e ) {
echo “Query failed: “ . $e- > getMessage();
}

? >

Notice that, although the call to $conn - > query() still returns a PDOStatement object, the object is

discarded in this case. There ’ s no result set to examine, so there ’ s no need to hold onto the
PDOStatement object.
However, chances are that you do want to insert data that is stored in PHP variables. For example, if a
member has just registered using a registration form, you ’ ll want to pass the form data to the INSERT
statement to add the member record. The safest way to do this is to create a prepared statement using
PDO::prepare() , as you did with SELECT queries in the previous chapter. You can then use
placeholders in the query string for each of the field values that you want to insert, and pass the data
into the query using calls to PDOStatement::bindValue() . For example:
< ?php
$dsn = “mysql:dbname=mydatabase”;
$username = “root”;
$password = “mypass”;

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