Wenn man zum Beispiel bei einem komplexen Join automatisch alle Spalten mit Prefixen für eine Tabelle versehen will kann man folgenden Code verwenden:

function fetchAssoc(&$db, $strQuery)
{

  $result = $db->query($strQuery);

  $arReturn = array();

  while ($row = $result->fetch_assoc())
  {

    $arReturn[] = $row;

  }

  return $arReturn;

} 

function prefixed_table(&$db, $table_alias, $table)
{

  $columns = fetchAssoc($db, "SHOW COLUMNS FROM `".$table."`");

  $field_names = array();

  foreach ($columns as $column)
  {

    $field_names[] = $column["Field"];

  }

  $prefixed = array();

  foreach ($field_names as $field_name)
  {

  	$prefixed[] = "`".$table_alias."`.`".$field_name."` AS `".$table.".".$field_name."`";

  }

	return implode(", ", $prefixed);

}

Beispielhafte Anwendung für einen xtCommerce Export:

define(TBL_PRODUCTS, ‚xt_products‘);
define(TBL_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION, ‚xt_products_description‘);
define(TBL_PRODUCTS_CATEGORIE, ‚xt_products_to_categories‘); 

$db = mysqli_connect(DB_HOST, DB_USERNAME, DB_PASSWORD, DB_NAME);

$strQuery = "
  SELECT
    ".prefixed_table($db, ‚P‘, TBL_PRODUCTS).",
    ".prefixed_table($db, ‚PD‘, TBL_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION).",
    GROUP_CONCAT(PC.`categories_id`) AS `".TBL_PRODUCTS_CATEGORIE.".categories_id`,
    GROUP_CONCAT(PC.`master_link`) AS `".TBL_PRODUCTS_CATEGORIE.".master_link`
  FROM
    `".TBL_PRODUCTS."` AS P
      LEFT JOIN `".TBL_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION."` AS PD ON (P.`products_id` = PD.`products_id`)
      LEFT JOIN `".TBL_PRODUCTS_CATEGORIE."` AS PC ON (P.`products_id` = PC.`products_id`)
  GROUP BY
    P.`products_id`
";

$product_data = fetchAssoc($db, $strQuery);