Managing & Using MySQL, 2nd Edition

Quote Retrieval

The get_stock( ) function provides all stock information from MySQL for the stock with the specified symbol. It formulates a query based on the ticker symbol and sticks the results into a Stock structure.

Stock *get_stock(char *symbol) {
    char *query = "SELECT symbol, openPrice, currPrice, high52, low52, \
                  FROM Stock WHERE symbol = '%s'";
    char *sql;
    int state;
  
    error = (char *)NULL;
    sql = (char *)malloc((strlen(query) + strlen(symbol) + 1) * sizeof(char));
    sprintf(sql, query, symbol);
    state = mysql_query(connection, sql);
    free(sql);
    if( state != 0 ) {
        error = mysql_error(connection);
        return (Stock *)NULL;
    }
    else {
        MYSQL_RES *result;
        Stock *stock;
        MYSQL_ROW row;
  
        result = mysql_store_result(connection);
        if( result == (MYSQL_RES *)NULL ) {
            error = mysql_error(connection);
            return (Stock *)NULL;
        }
        stock = (Stock *)malloc(sizeof(Stock));
        row = mysql_fetch_row(result);
        if( !row ) {
            error = "Invalid symbol.";
            return (Stock *)NULL;
        }
        stock->symbol = row[0];
        stock->open_price = atof(row[1]);
        stock->current_price = atof(row[2]);
        stock->high52 = atof(row[3]);
        stock->low52 = atof(row[4]);
        return stock;
    }
}

The first line of the function is where we prepare the query. It includes the entire query except for a %s placeholder for the ticker symbol. We will insert this into the string later using sprintf( ) .

The function next clears out the error message used by the get_error( ) helper function. Clearing out the error message is critical since MySQL actually manages the memory allocated ...