What is wrong with that column in my MySQL statement?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
mysql_fetch_array() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in select

I have this:

$query=mysql_query("SELECT DISTINCT username FROM messages 
WHERE to='admin' AND read='0'");

If I use mysql_fetch_assoc($query) I get the error:

PHP Warning: mysql_fetch_assoc() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given

However, when I remove the following from the SQL statement: AND read='0', there is no error and everything works.

There is something about that "read" column. Its type is "int(1)" with default value 0

Does anyone know why it's doing that? THanks a lot

Please stop writing new code with the ancient `mysql_*` functions. They are no longer maintained and community has begun the [deprecation process](http://news.php.net/php.internals/53799) . Instead you should learn about [prepared statements](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepared_statement) and use either [PDO](http://php.net/pdo) or [MySQLi](http://php.net/mysqli). If you care to learn, [here is a quite good PDO-related tutorial](http://wiki.hashphp.org/PDO_Tutorial_for_MySQL_Developers). — tereško, May 01 '12 at 19:22
Hi thanks very much for your links. I'm going through that PDO tutorial. Regards — alexx0186, May 01 '12 at 21:12

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered May 01 '12 at 19:20

4

Read is a reserved keyword in MySQL.

You need to enclose the column name with backticks:

AND `read`='0'

answered May 01 '12 at 19:20

nickb

Or better yet, don't use reserved words for column names! – WWW May 01 '12 at 19:21
Hi thanks for your response. Should I assume it's bad practice to use that word? Regards – alexx0186 May 01 '12 at 19:21
Yes, it is typically bad practice to use keywords as column names. – nickb May 01 '12 at 19:22

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered May 01 '12 at 19:21

1

Add backticks (`) around your column names as read is a reserved word in MySQL.

answered May 01 '12 at 19:21

SenorAmor

2 Answers2