reading from a database using WordPress

Question

I am very new to WordPress, I have very little knowledge with PHP. I read about PODS and I know how to create one and use pages / templates to display data.

The issue I am havingis, the PODS I was creating use static data entered via the WP dashboard, what I want is to read data from a database, I am using MySql (same DB that wordpress is using). is there a way to use PODS and read the data from the DB, or wordpress has a better way to handle data coming from the DB ?

Thanks

Answer 1

You should Look into the $wpdb variable (and class)
http://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/wpdb

Do remember to declare it a global:

<?php global $wpdb; ?>

I am however not sure what you want.
I advise staying close to wordpress.
If you want to create your own custom post types without using code use moretypes

Answer 2

Usual way to read from database in WordPress is the following:

1. get global variable $wpdb

   global $wpdb

2. prepare the output and SQL command

   $output = "";
   $sql = "SELECT ".$wpdb->prefix."posts.post_title,
   ".$wpdb->prefix."posts.post_name FROM ".
   $wpdb->prefix."posts WHERE ".$wpdb->prefix.
   "posts.post_status='publish' AND ".$wpdb->prefix.
   "posts.post_parent=0 AND ".$wpdb->prefix.
   "posts.post_type='sometype'";

3. method get_results() retrieves values from db

   $posts = $wpdb->get_results($sql);
   $output .= '';
   foreach ($posts as $post) {
   $output .= '

4. post_name). '">'.strip_tags($post->post_title).'
'; } $output .= ''; echo $output;

Answer 3

Wordpress CSM has a very good class to work with db, i think the better bet on this is learn how db connects and get data from mysql