Create a table from MySQL using PHP PDO

I am trying to simply present a table in HTML that is stored in a MySQL database. I would like to use Object Oriented PHP to access and fetch the data for the table. I have spent some time learning the different elements and have tried to put together a generic template I can use to access the tables in the database.

Questions:

• Is there anything wrong with the code below?

• Is there a better way to do this?

• Are there any redundancies in the code? Is a more generally preferred/standard way of doing this? I've seen foreach and while being used...

    field1
    field2
    field3
    field4
    field5

setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
$dbh->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_EMULATE_PREPARES, false);
$sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT * FROM a_temp");
$sth->execute();
$result = $sth->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
?>
 $row) : ?>

    
    
    
    
    

• The fetch() call only calls a single row from result set.

• Your foreach loop will, as a result, just go in the first result and do nothing. It may even produce an error/notice for undefined index in $row.

• While using a SELECT statement in PHP, always include the specific columns that you want to fetch. This is among good practices.

$sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT `field1`, `field2`, `field3`, `field4`, `field5` FROM a_temp");
$sth->execute();
?>
fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC) as $row) : ?>

    
    
    
    
    

Or, if you want to use a while loop:

$sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT `field1`, `field2`, `field3`, `field4`, `field5` FROM a_temp");
$sth->execute();
?>
fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC) ) { ?>

    
    
    
    
    

StackExchange Code Review Q#24743, answer score: 4