Table of Contents for

MySQL in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

This function returns one row from the results of an SQL statement in the form of an array, where each column returned is represented by an element of the array, in order. This method combines prepare(), execute(), and fetchrow_array(). No statement handle is created, so finish() is unnecessary. An optional second argument can specify any of the attributes allowed for a statement handle. If placeholders are used in the SQL statement, their values must be given as an array for the third argument. Here is an example:

...
my $sql_stmnt = "SELECT title, author
                 FROM books WHERE book_id = ?";
                 
my ($title, $author) = $dbh->selectrow_array($sql_stmnt, undef, '1234');

print "$title by $author \n";

No attributes are given for the SQL statement in this example, so undef is used for the second argument. The third argument provides the book_id value for the placeholder in the SQL statement. Notice that this select_ type of database handle method does not require the use of a control statement to parse the data because it retrieves only one row of data. The prepare() method isn’t called to create a statement handle if the SQL statement is given (as it is here), which means finish() is unnecessary. However, a statement handle could be given instead.