How do these methods work?

[TechnoDiver]

I've been scrolling through some 3rd party code trying to get ideas and a deeper understanding of PHP. I came across these 2 simple methods in a class entitled 'Category' ->

public function deleteCategory($id) {
    $query = mysqli_query($this->conn, "DELETE FROM top_categories WHERE top_cat_id=$id");
    if($query) {
        return true;
    } else {
        return false;
    }
}

public function updateCategory($id, $category) {
    $query = mysqli_query($this->conn, "UPDATE top_categories SET top_cat_title='$category' WHERE top_cat_id=$id");
    if($query) {
        return true;
    } else {
        return false;
    }
}

They're simple enough and work perfectly in the context of their functionality, but I don't understand how. Their instantiation and calls are ordinary but I don't understand how they do what they do. To me (a very untrained eye) they look like they initialize a variable ($query) and then check if it's initialized or not without actually doing anything with it.

They've both been instantiated in a file that is included at the top of each page and the method calls are seemingly normal ->

if(isset($_POST['edit_cat'])) {
  $cat_obj->updateCategory($cat_id, $_POST['cat_title']);
  header("Location: category.php?message=category-updated");
}

if(isset($_GET['cat_id'])) {
  $cat_obj->deleteCategory($_GET['cat_id']);
  header("Location: category.php?message=deleted-successfully");
}

Can someone with the time and will please explain how these 2 methods do the things they do?

[kicken]

12 minutes ago, TechnoDiver said:

Their instantiation and calls are ordinary but I don't understand how they do what they do.

They execute a SQL Query by calling the mysqli_query function.  The variable holds the result of whether that query was executed successfully or not (true/false). 

The variable and if/else statements are unnecessary, they could have just returned the result of mysqli_query directly instead.

[TechnoDiver]

Those methods actually execute the query?!

I feel dumb, it looks to me that $query is just being assigned a mysql query string to be used later, but yea, I get it now

When you say that they could just return the result do you mean something like this?? ->

$result = mysqli_fetch_array($query);
return $result;

If they would have just returned the result, as in my sample code directly above, I would have completely understood it as my confusion came from $query not being used again in the method

Thanks for clarifying, it still doesn't feel right but I'll just get use to it lol

[kicken]

UPDATE / DELETE queries don't have a result set, as such mysqli_query will just return true/false to indicate whether the query was successful or not.  There's nothing to fetch so no reason to use mysqli_fetch_array.

By returning the result, I mean those methods could have just been:

public function deleteCategory($id) {
    return mysqli_query($this->conn, "DELETE FROM top_categories WHERE top_cat_id=$id");
}

mysqli_query will return true or false.  Adding the variable and if branch to check if it's true, just to then return true if it is, is entirely unnecessary.

 

[TechnoDiver]

Yea, that makes total sense now, I get it. Thank you

[maxxd]

Also, both methods should be using prepared statements - the delete is being driven off a $_GET variable. Not sure what the overall code base is that this came from, but I'd recommend not trusting anything you see in there all that much...