empty output, can't understand why!

[dbarasuk]

Hi,
The next script is designed to show in a webpage the columns from a table named "item" from the SQL query "SHOW COLUMNS FROM item"

I expect to see the columns of that table in the webpage but I can't. Instead I get an empty page.

Can you please tell me where is the error by analyzing the code?

Thanks in advance:

<?php
// Define MySQL connection
$connection = Mysql_connect('localhost', '', '');
// select database
mysql_select_db('cookbook', $connection);
// function to extract column names
function get_column_names_with_show($connection, $tbl_name)
{
// query definition
$query = "SHOW COLUMNS FROM item ";
// execute query and keep result_id in $result
$result = mysql_query($query, $connection);
If(!$result)
{
return (FALSE);
}
// array to contain retrieved column names
$names = array();
// Loop to return an array of names
while( list($name, $type, $null, $key, $default, $extra) = mysql_fetch_row($result))
{

$names[]=$name; // append name to array
}
mysql_free_result($result);
return($names);
$names = get_colum_names_with_show($connection, 'item') ;
}

?>

[edited by: eelixduppy at 1:04 am (utc) on Feb. 23, 2008]
[edit reason] removed credentials [/edit]

[phparion]

where are you calling the function? within the function definition :)

take this out of the function body

$names = get_colum_names_with_show($connection, 'item') ;

[phparion]

also in your query you are hard coding the table name then what is the merit to send the table name as variable?

[dbarasuk]

Hi,
I changed the while loop to look like:

while( $row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
{
$col = $row['field'];
$names[]=$col; // append name to array
}

mysql_free_result($result);
return($names);

to retrieve only the first column of the result in which i am interested and then append the successive values to the $names array.

As you see i also took out the line mentionned above, but still getting an empty page.

Note that I tested if the sql really is ok before i put it in the php code.
Any idea?

[phparion]

blank page also appears when your code has some syntax error and your error_reporting is switched off... check your log to see what error is thrown and fix that... most of the times a missing ; or . or an unnecessary { }