mysqli_result::fetch_field

mysqli_fetch_field

(PHP 5, PHP 7)

mysqli_result::fetch_field -- mysqli_fetch_field — Returns the next field in the result set

Description

Object oriented style

object mysqli_result::fetch_field ( void )

Procedural style

object mysqli_fetch_field ( mysqli_result $result )

Returns the definition of one column of a result set as an object. Call this function repeatedly to retrieve information about all columns in the result set.

Parameters

result: Procedural style only: A result set identifier returned by mysqli_query(), mysqli_store_result() or mysqli_use_result().

Return Values

Returns an object which contains field definition information or FALSE if no field information is available.

**Object properties**
Property	Description
name	The name of the column
orgname	Original column name if an alias was specified
table	The name of the table this field belongs to (if not calculated)
orgtable	Original table name if an alias was specified
def	Reserved for default value, currently always ""
db	Database (since PHP 5.3.6)
catalog	The catalog name, always "def" (since PHP 5.3.6)
max_length	The maximum width of the field for the result set.
length	The width of the field, as specified in the table definition.
charsetnr	The character set number for the field.
flags	An integer representing the bit-flags for the field.
type	The data type used for this field
decimals	The number of decimals used (for integer fields)

Examples

Example #1 Object oriented style


<?php
$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "my_user", "my_password", "world");

/* check connection */
if (mysqli_connect_errno()) {
    printf("Connect failed: %s\n", mysqli_connect_error());
    exit();
}

$query = "SELECT Name, SurfaceArea from Country ORDER BY Code LIMIT 5";

if ($result = $mysqli->query($query)) {

    /* Get field information for all columns */
    while ($finfo = $result->fetch_field()) {

        printf("Name:     %s\n", $finfo->name);
        printf("Table:    %s\n", $finfo->table);
        printf("max. Len: %d\n", $finfo->max_length);
        printf("Flags:    %d\n", $finfo->flags);
        printf("Type:     %d\n\n", $finfo->type);
    }
    $result->close();
}

/* close connection */
$mysqli->close();
?>

Example #2 Procedural style


<?php
$link = mysqli_connect("localhost", "my_user", "my_password", "world");

/* check connection */
if (mysqli_connect_errno()) {
    printf("Connect failed: %s\n", mysqli_connect_error());
    exit();
}

$query = "SELECT Name, SurfaceArea from Country ORDER BY Code LIMIT 5";

if ($result = mysqli_query($link, $query)) {

    /* Get field information for all fields */
    while ($finfo = mysqli_fetch_field($result)) {

        printf("Name:     %s\n", $finfo->name);
        printf("Table:    %s\n", $finfo->table);
        printf("max. Len: %d\n", $finfo->max_length);
        printf("Flags:    %d\n", $finfo->flags);
        printf("Type:     %d\n\n", $finfo->type);
    }
    mysqli_free_result($result);
}

/* close connection */
mysqli_close($link);
?>

The above examples will output:

Name:     Name
Table:    Country
max. Len: 11
Flags:    1
Type:     254

Name:     SurfaceArea
Table:    Country
max. Len: 10
Flags:    32769
Type:     4

User Contributed Notes

iansoko at hotmail dot com

4 years ago


here are the data types that correspond to the TYPE number returned by fetch_field. 

thought i would post this here since i couldn't find the info elsewhere.

numerics 
-------------
BIT: 16
TINYINT: 1
BOOL: 1
SMALLINT: 2
MEDIUMINT: 9
INTEGER: 3
BIGINT: 8
SERIAL: 8
FLOAT: 4
DOUBLE: 5
DECIMAL: 246
NUMERIC: 246
FIXED: 246

dates
------------
DATE: 10
DATETIME: 12
TIMESTAMP: 7
TIME: 11
YEAR: 13

strings & binary
------------
CHAR: 254
VARCHAR: 253
ENUM: 254
SET: 254
BINARY: 254
VARBINARY: 253
TINYBLOB: 252
BLOB: 252
MEDIUMBLOB: 252
TINYTEXT: 252
TEXT: 252
MEDIUMTEXT: 252
LONGTEXT: 252

ragtag at hotmail dot com

7 years ago


The flags used by MySql are:                                                                                                                                            
       NOT_NULL_FLAG = 1                                                                              
       PRI_KEY_FLAG = 2                                                                               
       UNIQUE_KEY_FLAG = 4                                                                            
       BLOB_FLAG = 16                                                                                 
       UNSIGNED_FLAG = 32                                                                             
       ZEROFILL_FLAG = 64                                                                             
       BINARY_FLAG = 128                                                                              
       ENUM_FLAG = 256                                                                                
       AUTO_INCREMENT_FLAG = 512                                                                      
       TIMESTAMP_FLAG = 1024                                                                          
       SET_FLAG = 2048                                                                                
       NUM_FLAG = 32768                                                                               
       PART_KEY_FLAG = 16384                                                                          
       GROUP_FLAG = 32768                                                                             
       UNIQUE_FLAG = 65536                                                                            

To test if a flag is set you can use & like so:
<?php
$meta = $mysqli_result_object->fetch_field();
if ($meta->flags & 4) { 
  echo 'Unique key flag is set'; 
} 
?>

andre at koethur dot de

2 years ago


Here are two methods for converting the 'type' and 'flags' attributes to text for debugging purposes. They both use the predefined MYSQLI_ constants to generate the text.

<?php

public static function h_type2txt($type_id)
{
    static $types;

    if (!isset($types))
    {
        $types = array();
        $constants = get_defined_constants(true);
        foreach ($constants['mysqli'] as $c => $n) if (preg_match('/^MYSQLI_TYPE_(.*)/', $c, $m)) $types[$n] = $m[1];
    }

    return array_key_exists($type_id, $types)? $types[$type_id] : NULL;
}

public static function h_flags2txt($flags_num)
{
    static $flags;

    if (!isset($flags))
    {
        $flags = array();
        $constants = get_defined_constants(true);
        foreach ($constants['mysqli'] as $c => $n) if (preg_match('/MYSQLI_(.*)_FLAG$/', $c, $m)) if (!array_key_exists($n, $flags)) $flags[$n] = $m[1];
    }

    $result = array();
    foreach ($flags as $n => $t) if ($flags_num & $n) $result[] = $t;
    return implode(' ', $result);
}

?>

miqrogroove at gmail dot com

3 years ago


Beware the values of the predefined constants.  They do not always correlate with the actual field types.  For example:

MYSQLI_TYPE_BLOB: 252
MYSQLI_TYPE_TINY_BLOB: 249
MYSQLI_TYPE_MEDIUM_BLOB: 250
MYSQLI_TYPE_LONG_BLOB: 251

MySQLi will indeed return a value of 252 for a tinytext field, but as you can see, this does not correspond to the value of MYSQLI_TYPE_TINY_BLOB.

Anonymous