PDO store outputted array into variable

Question

I am using PDO and I have the code outputting an array of my records when I echo the foreach loop. However I cannot figure out how to store this within a variable instead. If I replace echo with $foo = the variable is empty. My brain is stuck, I know it isn't hard but I cannot think what I need to change.

I would like all the rows to be stored within the variable e.g. ['2013-08-09','Heptageniidae',3],['2013-08-09','Ephemerellidae',2],

Thanks

$sql  = "SELECT * FROM userrecords";
$stmt = $conn->prepare($sql);
$stmt->execute();

//$data = $stmt->fetchAll();

echo json_encode( $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ROW);


    //foreach ($data as $row): 
    // echo "['" . $row['eventdate'] . "','" . $row['scientificname'] . "'," .  $row['category_of_taxom'] . "],";
    //endforeach 

Answer 1

here is the right way of what are you doing

echo json_encode( $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_NUM) );

and here is what you were asking for

$foo = '';
foreach ($data as $row)
{
     $foo .= "['" . $row['eventdate'] . "','" 
          . $row['scientificname'] . "'," . $row['category_of_taxom'] . "],";
}
echo $foo;

which is WRONG.

Never create a JSON string manually.

Answer 2

It looks like your doing nothing wrong. You might want to check $stmt->errorInfo(); for database problems, and you can use var_dump(); or print_r(); in php to check the contents of the array that was returned by the fetchAll() command.