php INSERT INTO database variable name

Question

When trying to use

$SomeTable = "SomeTable";
INSERT INTO "' . $SomeTable . '" SET ...

instead of

INSERT INTO SomeTable SET ...

I am unsuccessful. Why am I unable to use a php variable to call a database name?

You need to wrap table names (and column names) in backticks, not single or double quotes. — andrewsi
– andrewsi, Commented Sep 13, 2013 at 15:56
And you should really be using prepared statements rather than just concatenating strings. — christopher
– christopher, Commented Sep 13, 2013 at 15:57
@Chris Sadly you can't use placeholders for table names. This is a massive oversight. — tadman
– tadman, Commented Sep 13, 2013 at 15:59
@tadman Really!? I would have thought it would be the same principle? Wow. Learn something new every day. — christopher
– christopher, Commented Sep 13, 2013 at 16:00
PDO really should do it, but for some reason it's never gained this capability. Data placeholders are always escaped as strings, but table names use a different escaping method. — tadman
– tadman, Commented Sep 13, 2013 at 16:06

RyanS · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-13 15:57:57Z

2

You would need to use something like this:

$SomeTable = "SomeTable";
$query = 'INSERT INTO `' . $SomeTable . '` SET ... ';

Which uses the ` character instead of quotes

answered Sep 13, 2013 at 15:57

RyanS

4,2243 gold badges25 silver badges37 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

why are the backticks necessary there?

I believe its to help distinguish it from SQL statements such as WHERE, FROM, etc. I didn't find anything official in my brief google