Is it bad to put a MySQL query in a PHP loop?

Question

I often have large arrays, or large amounts of dynamic data in PHP that I need to run MySQL queries to handle.

Is there a better way to run many processes like INSERT or

Answer 1

If you have the mysqli class, you can iterate over the values to insert using a prepared statement.

$sth = $dbh->prepare("INSERT INTO Fruits (Fruit) VALUES (?)");
foreach($fruits as $fruit)
{
    $sth->reset(); // make sure we are fresh from the previous iteration
    $sth->bind_param('s', $fruit); // bind one or more variables to the query
    $sth->execute(); // execute the query
}