Hi! I am new to PHP and Postgres; in the early stages of creating a web
app, just trying to achieve rudimentary results, yet trying to follow
"best practices" -- in the form of using Stored Procedures vs. Dynamic
SQL -- as I do hope to take it live to the scary ol' Internet one day.
I have a stored procedure (function), "select_user_details", of the form
"SELECT * FROM users;" which returns "SETOF users".
When I execute my prepared statement, "SELECT
select_user_details([userid])" via PDO, I get a rowset back which holds
all the columns of users as an array in one column. From my experiement
directly in pgAdmin Query tool, I guess that's what you expect when you
return SETOF, but I already miss the simple DSQL I had set up where I
could access returned columns via $row[columname] syntax.
I messed around with using fetch() but that didn't seem right (more on
that below). Then I took a look at fetchColumn() but I didn't like that
because you address columns by index # instead of column name. Also the
fact that you advance the row pointer with every call to any kind of
fetch*() seems like it isn't well suited to retrieving data from more
than one column.
Now it looks like my best option in hopes of being able to access
columns by semantically sensible names is to fetchObject() into PHP
objects representing my database business objects. Is this correct?
Suggestions? Alternatives? Insights?
In Postgres, is there any way to use named params in my stored
procedures rather than just addressing them by number?
Also, what do I tell my SP to return if I want to return a set of
columns that is not directly represented by some existing table/schema
in my database. For example "a few columns from table a, joined to a few
columns from table b..." that sort of thing.
To back up a few steps to the "big picture" standpoint, I can see pretty
clearly how things should work well if I am using a stored procedure to
return a single value, but I am not so sure when it comes to returning
multiple column recordsets. Is this the best way to go about returning,
say, a complete "User Details" record?
Bonus question: why, when I was first experimenting with this, and
trying to figure out how to "get at" my SELECTed data after calling
$spUsers->execute(), and used the form "$row = $spUsers->fetch();" did
the resulting $row contain a 2-element array? The element indices were
[select_user_details] and [0] and both contained the identical row
value. (Only one row is being returned by the SP at this point, and I
don't understand how, in the PHP code, that row was being appended to
the $row array more than once. Hence, confusion.)
Any links to existing tutorials/examples on these specifics would be
welcome as well.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for any help!
