Receive array of data and access employee info fields

public function doSomeStuff($arr = array())
{
    $id = $arr['Employee']['id'];
    $name = $arr['Employee']['name'];
    $status = $arr['Employee']['status'] == 'Disabled' ? 0 : 1;
    $user_id = $arr['Employee']['user_id'];
    $query = "update `mytable` set `status` = $status, `name`=$name   WHERE `user_id` = ?";
    self::_runthis($query, array($user_id));
}

• Instead of accessing the employee key every time, just pass in the array rooted at the Employee key

• What happens if all of the array indexes are not set? You should either check for that or use an object on which you know they all exist

• Important mostly for data integrity (what if you create an Employee array somewhere and forget a status or something?)

• But also accessing non-set array keys issues a notice

• I suspect there's something wrong with your class design as a whole. In particular, the same class should probably not have a method to update an employee and a method to run a query (you don't happen to have something extending some vague DB class do you...?)

• Why is name not a place holder like the user_id?

• Use real names when posting code here -- doSomeStuff is very vague, and that hampers our ability to review

• A text status should probably not be being passed into this since it seems like you're dealing with a low level record here

• Don't quote entity names unless you need to. It breaks compatibility across SQL-dialects for no reason

• What if $name has spaces? What if it has a ' in it? Look into SQL injection and prepared statements. (They're not just about security. There also about correctness. In it's current form, your code has a very major bug.)

• A default value for the parameter shouldn't be provided. Would you want someone to call $obj->doSomeStuff();