This might be quite a trivial question, but which of these methods is best practice for structuring an array for return db results? say a list of blog posts... Sorting and group
No use making a data structure that doesn't look right when you output it. The second data set it also way more usable which is why it is used in bigger projects like Wordpress.
The second is better AND simpler to set up:
while ($row = $result->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
$posts[] = $row;
}
// total number of posts
$nrPosts = count($post);
This will auto-index the array numerically, and you don't need to copy anything from $row into $post, it'll simply copy the whole row.
The second structure is better: