Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL® and Apache All in One

Using the SELECT Command

SELECT is the SQL command used to retrieve records. This command syntax can be totally simplistic or very complicated. As you become more comfortable with database programming, you will learn to enhance your SELECT statements, ultimately making your database do as much work as possible and not overworking your programming language.

The most basic SELECT syntax looks like this:

SELECT expressions_and_columns FROM table_name
[WHERE some_condition_is_true]
[ORDER BY some_column [ASC | DESC]]
[LIMIT offset, rows]

Look at the first line:

SELECT expressions_and_columns FROM table_name

One handy expression is the * symbol, which stands for everything. So, to select everything (all rows, all columns) from the grocery_inventory ...