Which is version is “better” and why? (my level: beginner)

Question

I'm working on an exercise where I"m supposed to display all data contained in a table. Here's the solution I can up with:

<?php
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM contacts ORDER BY id DESC");
    while($user= mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
        echo $user['first'] . " " . $user['last'] . "<br />" . $user[phone] . "br />";
    }
?>

Here's the solution the tutorial gave:

<?php 
$result=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM contacts ORDER BY id DESC");

$num=mysql_num_rows($result); 

$i=0;
while ($i < $num) {

$first=mysql_result($result,$i,"first");
$last=mysql_result($result,$i,"last");
$phone=mysql_result($result,$i,"phone");


echo "<b>$first $last</b><br>Phone: $phone<br><hr><br>";

$i++;
}
?>

The database fields are:

id
first
last
phone

Can someone explain WHY one is better than the other. They both work as far as I can tell.

*EDIT: I've rewritten the query based on the advice given by @Paul below: *

<?php 
$pdo_connect = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=db', 'root', 'pass');

$statement = $pdo_connect ->query("SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY id DESC");
    while($user = $statement->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {


        echo "{$user['first']} {$user['last']} <br /> {$user['phone']} <br /><hr>";
    }

?>

Answer 1

Yours is better. Both are bad.

Don't use either of them

The mysql_* functions aren't a good way to learn how to interact with databases. It is a shame that there are still tutorials teaching how to interact with databases using these functions. Here is a snippet that explains more about why you shouldn't use those functions and what you can use instead:

Please, don't use mysql_* functions in new code. They are no longer maintained and the deprecation process has begun on it. See the red box? Learn about prepared statements instead, and use PDO or MySQLi - this article will help you decide which. If you choose PDO, here is a good tutorial.
_{Snippet Source}

Minor Comments

You missed quotes around phone.

In pure PHP don't use an end tag ?>. It can cause output if you have blank lines after it causing headers to be sent prematurely (see this).

Answer 2

You are doing it as an exercise but still it is good to pay attention to your sql queries. This is where it gains/loose performance (let's assume your contacts table has more than 100000 contacts ).

Here you have "SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY id DESC". First thing, do you really need that order by clause? if not, then remove it else make sure that id column in contacts table is indexed. Note that sort is always expensive.

order by id can also be achieved in php side using a custom sort algorithm or php sort function. However mysql sort wins over php sort whereas I believe it is opposite in case of java.