$wpdb->prepare placeholders %d %s , working, but I am not convinced I have done it the best
<p>I have managed after a struggle to understand what is happening with the prepare placeholders. My only thought is that my table does not have a consistent element in it that I can use as a reference with the place holder. </p>

<p>There is a test column that I have used, but i do not intend on having it in my production plugin. The column is set to 0 for each entry, and I set the $test to 0. Thus my query has now started working. But this doesn't really make sense as a security feature unless it is dynamically calling something in reference to the results on the database. The examples I have seen around all rely on a set constant in their query, but I haven't got this unless I just add a constant entry in the database, but this seems silly. </p>

<pre><code>$test = 0;
$result = 
$wpdb-&gt;get_results( $wpdb-&gt;prepare
    ( "SELECT * FROM $my_noted_table_name WHERE id_can_view = %d ", $test));
</code></pre>

<p>Is there a better way of doing this?</p>

<p>Thanks in advance.. </p>