While sprucing up the PHP code I use to provide my own Stack Overflow API for GeeQe I ran into an error caused by trying to use multiple prepared statements with MySQLi. It turned up when I tried to execute one prepared statement while looping over the result set from another prepared statement that were both created on the same connection. What came out was the following error:

"Commands out of sync; you can't run this command now"

Details about this error can be found in the mysql docs. Reading those details makes it clear that the result sets of a prepared statement execution need to be fetched completely before executing another prepared statement on the same connection.

Fixing the issue can be accomplished by using the store result call. Here is an example of what I initially was trying to do:

<?php

  $db_connection = new mysqli('127.0.0.1', 'user', '', 'test');

  $post_stmt = $db_connection->prepare("select id, title from post where id = 1000");
  $comment_stmt = $db_connection->prepare("select user_id from comment where post_id = ?");

  if ($post_stmt->execute())
  {
    $post_stmt->bind_result($post_id, $post_title);

    if ($post_stmt->fetch())
    {
      $comments = array();

      $comment_stmt->bind_param('i', $post_id);
      if ($comment_stmt->execute())
      {
        $comment_stmt->bind_result($user_id);
        while ($comment_stmt->fetch())
        {
          array_push($comments, array('user_id' => $user_id));
        }
      }
      else
      {
        printf("Comment statement error: %s\n", $comment_stmt->error);
      }
    }
  }
  else
  {
    printf("Post statement error: %s\n", $post_stmt->error);
  }

  $post_stmt->close();
  $comment_stmt->close();

  $db_connection->close();

  printf("ID: %d -> %s\n", $post_id, $post_title);
  print_r($comments);
?>

The above will result in the following error:

Comment statement error: Commands out of sync; you can't run this command now
PHP Notice:  Undefined variable: post_title in error.php on line 41
ID: 9033 -> 
Array
(
)

Here is what needs to be done to make it work correctly:

<?php

  $db_connection = new mysqli('127.0.0.1', 'user', '', 'test');

  $post_stmt = $db_connection->prepare("select id, title from post where id = 1000");
  $comment_stmt = $db_connection->prepare("select user_id from comment where post_id = ?");

  if ($post_stmt->execute())
  {
    $post_stmt->store_result();
    $post_stmt->bind_result($post_id, $post_title);

    if ($post_stmt->fetch())
    {
      $comments = array();

      $comment_stmt->bind_param('i', $post_id);
      if ($comment_stmt->execute())
      {
        $comment_stmt->bind_result($user_id);
        while ($comment_stmt->fetch())
        {
          array_push($comments, array('user_id' => $user_id));
        }
      }
      else
      {
        printf("Comment statement error: %s\n", $comment_stmt->error);
      }
    }

    $post_stmt->free_result();
  }
  else
  {
    printf("Post statement error: %s\n", $post_stmt->error);
  }

  $post_stmt->close();
  $comment_stmt->close();

  $db_connection->close();

  printf("ID: %d -> %s\n", $post_id, $post_title);
  print_r($comments);
?>

A couple things to note about the above example:

• The bind and fetch on the statement still works correctly.
• Make sure the results are freed when the processing is done.