too long

The portion that is trying to delete duplicate entries in the database seems incorrect. So I suppose I am asking what would be the correct way to do that in this example. I am not totally new to PHP , but this is beyond me. If you could please tell me what is wrong and how to fix that would be greatly appreciated.

Now on to what I am trying to accomplish. I have a multidimensional array filled with values that is generated by a function. What I am trying to do is if there is a value in the array that already exists in the database delete it. Code: enter code here

if(is_array($items)){

$values = array();  

foreach($items as $row => $value){

    $rsn = mysqli_real_escape_string($connect, $value[0]);
    $rank = mysqli_real_escape_string($connect, $value[1]);
    $values[] = "('', '$rsn', '$rank', '')";  

    $sql = "SELECT id FROM users WHERE rsn = :rsn";

    $query = $conn->prepare($sql);

    $query->execute(array(":rsn" => $value[0]));

    $results = $query->rowCount();

    while($deleted = $query->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)){

        $sql = "DELETE FROM users WHERE id = :id";

        $query = $conn->prepare($sql);

        foreach($deleted as $delete){

        $query->execute(array(':id' => $delete));

        }

    }

}

//user_exists_delete($conn, $rsn);

$sql = "INSERT INTO users(id, rsn, rank, points) VALUES ";

$sql .= implode(', ', $values);


if(!empty($rank)&& !empty($rsn)){

    if(mysqli_query($connect, $sql)){

        echo "success";

    }else{

        die(mysqli_error($connect));

    }

}

}

EDIT: I have got it partially working now, just need it to delete all dupes instead of only one. I edited code to reflect changes.

There are a couple problems, if you didn't strip much of your original code and if you don't need to do more than just what you shown why not just send a delete instruction to your database instead of checking validity first?

You have

//Retrieve ID according to rsn.
$sql = "SELECT id FROM users WHERE rsn = :rsn ";
//Then retrieve rsn using rsn??? Useless
$sql = "SELECT rsn FROM users WHERE rsn = :rsn ";
//Then delete using ID, retrieved by rsn.
$sql = "DELETE FROM users WHERE id = :id";

All those could simply be done with a delete using rsn...

$sql = "DELETE FROM users WHERE rsn = :rsn";

The row won't be deleted if there are no rows to delete, you don't need to check in advance. If you need to do stuff after, then you might need to fetch information before, but if not, you can use that while still checking the affected rows to see if something got deleted.

Now, we could even simplify the script by using only one query instead of one per user... We could get all rsn in an array and then pass it to the DELETE.

$sql = "DELETE FROM users WHERE rsn in :rsn";
//Sorry not exactly sure how to do that in PDO, been a while.

I fixed it I just omitted the WHERE clause in the delete statement so all records are being deleted before that insert gets ran again.