> It fetchs the entire result set.

It is not supposed to.  Please provide a minimal self-contained
reproduce script which shows that behavior.  Thanks!

Alright here the snippet


<?php
$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "my_user", "my_password", "world");

/* check connection */
if ($mysqli->connect_errno) {
    printf("Connect failed: %s\n", $mysqli->connect_error);
    exit();
}

$query = "SELECT Name, CountryCode FROM City ORDER by ID LIMIT 3"; // So this could return up to 3 rows
$result = $mysqli->query($query);

/* numeric array */
$row = $result->fetch_array(MYSQLI_NUM);
// The resulting array is something like array('Germany','DE','USA','US','Great Britain','EN');
printf ("%s (%s)\n", $row[0], $row[1]);

/* associative array */
$row = $result->fetch_array(MYSQLI_ASSOC);
// $row should look like this array(array('Name'=>'Germany','CountryCode'=>'DE'),array('Name'=>'USA','CountryCode'=>'US'),array('Name'=>'Great Britain','CountryCode'=>'EN'));
printf ("%s (%s)\n", $row[0]["Name"], $row[0]["CountryCode"]);

/* associative and numeric array */
$row = $result->fetch_array(MYSQLI_BOTH);
printf ("%s (%s)\n", $row[0][0], $row[0]["CountryCode"]);

/* free result set */
$result->free();

/* close connection */
$mysqli->close();
?>

My fault.
The function only retrieve one row.
So if you want to get all rows, you have to call it in a loop.
Something like this:
while($row = $result->fetch_array(MYSQLI_ASSOC)){
$row2[] = $row;
}

> So if you want to get all rows, you have to call it in a loop.

Either that, or use mysqli_fetch_all().

Yeah, but fetch_all only works if your server has the mysqlnd-driver.
On the system I work with this isn't the case so I have to use a loop + some of the mysqli_fetch_*-functions.

When I understand it right I can also use mysqli_fetch_assoc if I only want a associated array or mysqli_fetch_row for a numeric array.