<?php

/**
 * Suppose you wanted all the results from all
 * the rows in the table and ordering the results
 * by the id table (if you had one). You would
 * do something like this:
 **/

$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `table` ORDER BY `id` DESC")

// we want all the results, so let's make a loop
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($query)){
    // Some imaginary rows
    $id = $row[id];
    $user = $row[username];
    $pass = $row[pass];

    // Return the output to the page
    echo $id.' '.$user.' '.$pass."\n";
}


/**
 * Ok. That was easy enough. But let's suppose you
 * don't want to return all the results in the table,
 * and you only want one result? That's fair enough.
 * We'll try something like this with the WHERE condition :)
 **/

// Grabbing the username where the id equals 1.
$query = mysql_query("SELECT `username` FROM `table` WHERE `id`='1'");

// Now, to turn that mysql resource into an actual result,
// we use the mysql_result function.
$result = mysql_result($query, 0);

// Return the result on the page.
echo $result;

/**
 * It is best to use WHERE conditions if possible, because it
 * narrows down your results to the exact thing. (Absolutely
 * essential on a multi-user system). Here is what I use for
 * extracting settings from the `settings` table that have
 * two columns name (id, value).
 * Let's assume that I have the values ('template', 'default')
 * in the `settings` table. Here's a mysql query that returns
 * the value of the setting named 'template' :)
 **/

$query = mysql_query("SELECT `value` FROM `settings` WHERE `id`='template'");
$template = mysql_result($query, 0);

// This would return the result of 'default'
echo $template;

?>