Why am i getting this error? WordPress database error: [Query was empty]

1 Views

I am using WordPress 3.4.2, latest version! I have no plugins installed except the one that I am writing.

So Here’s the deal, I’m reading a json feed and i’m trying to import its content into a table that i created in my wordpress database. I’ve used a similar set of code in another plugin that I wrote and it works fine there. I do not understand why it does not work here.

Read More

When i run this different plugin that i am writing i am get the dreaded and oh so clear “WordPress database error: [Query was empty]”.

Here is my code… 

// Setup the array
$values = array();

foreach ($bugs as $bug) {
 $status_text = $bug['text'];
 $tContent = htmlSpecialChars(html_entity_decode($status_text));
 $imported = 2;

 [ shortened to keep this post short, but other values are listed here. ]


  // for the values insert part
  $values[] = '("'.$tContent. '", "'.$imported.'")';
}

if(is_array($values)) {
   echo "<hr><strong>WHAT TO IMPORT?</strong><br/>";
   var_dump(implode(',', $values));
}

This output all of the values as expected. Everything is wrapped in parentheses and seperate by a comma.

Then i do this… 

global $wpdb;
$table_name = $wpdb->prefix . "bugtbl_temp";

$sql = $wpdb->prepare (
    "INSERT INTO $table_name
    (`post_content`, `imported`)
    VALUES ". implode(',', $values) . " ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE imported = 1"
);
$wpdb->query($sql); // execute query


$wpdb->print_error(); // any errors?
$wpdb->last_query; // show the qry
$wpdb->flush(); // cleanup

And then when i run this function I get the “WordPress database error: [Query was empty]” and nothing is imported into my table.

I saw on here one other guy was having problems with $wpdb->prepare. Am I using it incorrectly?

Post Views: 1

Related posts

Leave a Reply

3 comments

  1. I saw on here one other guy was having problems with $wpdb->prepare. Am I using it incorrectly?

    As you can read in the Codex, it’s a simple No.

    You have to use it like sprintf/printf(). The only allowed inputs are

    • string: %s
    • digit: %d

    Example

    $sql = $wpdb->prepare( 
     "
        INSERT INTO %s
        (`post_content`, `imported`)
        VALUES %s
        ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE imported = 1
     "
    ,"{$wpdb->prefix}bugtbl_temp"
    ,implode( ',', $values )
);

    Disclaimer: The ↑ shown query, doesn’t necessarily mean that it will give you results, just because you then used the $wpdb->prepare() right.

  2. I’ve had the same error when I forgot to add the last numeric argument in an update statement; Check that your arguments match up with the replacement tokens.

    Say you have an sql string like this:

    $sql = "update mytable set column1 = %s where id  = %d;"
$wpdb->query($wpdb->prepare($sql, 'foobar'));

    The solution is obviously to add the id

    $id = 5;
$wpdb->query($wpdb->prepare($sql, 'foobar', $id));

  3. Success! I got the wpdb->prepare to work FINALLY and I’d love to share my code snippet here — Hopefully someone else will find this useful.

    My Situation

    I was trying to import data from a feed into a custom table from a plugin I am writing. Several websites and even the guys that replied to this thread encouraged me to protect my import queries. However, even after reading the codex, I was not able to get this to work correctly or at all.

    Noteworthy Mistakes

    A couple of things that I was doing wrong were:

    1. Pulling all values into an array. I didn’t need to do this at all.
    2. I was trying to import more than one row of values using only one wpdb->prepare. The solution was to use one wp-db->prepare per row. I moved the wpdb->prepare command into my foreach statement. The thing is sometimes I will get more than one result that I want to import at one time and this does the trick. I will never have more than 20 results, so this should work just fine.

    A Solution

    This probably isnt the only way to do this, but this is the way I was able to make it to work. Here is the final working code snippet. I put this in my foreach statement. Hope it helps.

    foreach ($rows as $row) {

 // I've omitted the part in my where i take all of the values from the query and define variables, but that part would happen here.
// Prepare query
$sql = $wpdb->prepare("
    INSERT INTO $tablename (`ijAuthorID`, `ijDate`, `ijDescription`, `ijTitle`, `ijSlug`, `ijPostType`, `ijImported`, `ijUKID`) 
    VALUES (%d, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s) ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE ijImported = 1", 
    $tAuthor, $tPubDate, $tContent, $tTitle, $tPostName, $tPostType, $tImported, $tID
);

// Execute query
$wpdb->query($sql);

 }

    Thanks to those guys that answered my original post.