title: PHP with MySQLi fetch does not return rows with NULL on LEFT JOIN
body: <p>I have a table <code>matches</code> with rows containing reference IDs for sports, regions, countries and leagues among other things. I use <code>LEFT JOIN</code> to find the actual league name because not all matches have a league ID. </p>
  
  <p>I use the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$stmt = $mysqli-&gt;prepare("
      SELECT leagues.name, matches.league
      FROM matches
          LEFT JOIN leagues  
              ON leagues.short = matches.league 
      WHERE leagues.lang = ? AND matches.sport = ? AND matches.region = ? AND matches.country = ? 
      ORDER BY leagues.name ASC");
  
  $stmt-&gt;bind_param('ssss',$lang,$sport_short,$region_short,$country_short);
  $stmt-&gt;execute();
  $stmt-&gt;store_result();
  $stmt-&gt;bind_result($league,$league_short);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>If I at this point use <code>var_dump($league)</code> or <code>var_dump($league_short)</code> I see the <code>NULL</code> values. However after I try to fetch the rows with <code>while ($stmt-&gt;fetch) {...}</code> no rows with <code>NULL</code> gets included, what am I missing?</p>