You can use bound parameters only for an element that would be a constant value — a quoted string, a quoted datetime, or a numeric literal.
You can't use a parameter placeholder for anything else in SQL, like column names, table names, lists of values, SQL keywords or expressions, or other syntax.
If you need to make column names dynamic, the only option is to validate them against a list of known columns.
$columns_in_user_table = [
'userid'=>null,
'username'=>'',
'firstname'=>'',
'lastname'=>''
];
// Extract values from POST, but only those that match known columns
$parameters = array_intersect_key($_POST, $columns_in_user_table);
// Make sure no columns are missing; assign default values as needed
$parameters = array_merge($columns_in_user_table, $parameters);
If you use PDO instead of mysqli, you can skip the binding. Just use named parameters, and pass your associative array of column-value pairs directly to execute()
:
$columns = [];
$placeholders = [];
foreach ($parameters as $col => $value) {
$columns[] = "`$col`";
$placeholders[] = ":$col";
}
$column_list = implode($columns, ',');
$placeholder_list = implode($placeholders, ',');
// Write into the database
$sql = "INSERT INTO `user` ($column_list) VALUES ($placeholder_list)";
$stmt = $pdo->prepare($sql);
$stmt->execute($parameters);