Problem with SELECT querys syntax

I can not figure out what is wrong with this syntax:

$categorynameresult='SELECT DISTINCT cat_name FROM categories WHERE company = '$companyName' AND cid IN(\''.$categoryids.'\')';

I keep getting this error message:

Parse开发者_JAVA百科 error: syntax error, unexpected T_VARIABLE in ...

I know that $companyName and $categoryids have the values that I need, but there seems to be something wrong with the syntax Could sombody please help me? Thanks

You're closing the string prematurely with the single quotes around '$companyName', which is why PHP is giving you a parse error.

You could fix this by escaping those quotes (like you're doing with $companyids), but variables aren't interpolated in single quoted strings anyways. Rather than simply escaping the single quotes, you need to use double quotes around the whole string:

$categorynameresult="SELECT DISTINCT cat_name FROM categories WHERE company = '$companyName' AND cid IN($categoryids)";

This assumes that $categoryids is a comma-separated list of numeric IDs.

$categorynameresult="SELECT DISTINCT cat_name FROM categories WHERE company = '$companyName' AND cid IN('$categoryids')";

Single quotes around company name causes syntax error, try this:

$categorynameresult='SELECT DISTINCT cat_name FROM categories WHERE company = \''.$companyName.'\' AND cid IN(\''.$categoryids.'\')';

Your query is enclosed in '', while these also occur in the query - or, at least, try to do so.

Besides, you forgot to call mysql_real_escape() to escape your strings to be put into the query..

I think you are missing the concatenate operator:

'SELECT DISTINCT cat_name FROM categories WHERE company = \'' . $companyName . '\' AND cid IN(\'' . $categoryids . '\')';