How do I display the two most recent posts in a textarea using PHP and MySQL?

Question

My plan was to have one textarea at the top where you could type whatever you want and post it, then the two textarea's below it would update. But I have no idea how to do this, please help!

<?php
    if ($_POST['submit']) {
        mysql_connect ("10.246.16.206", "alanay_eu", "hidden")
        or die ('Error: ' . mysql_error());

        mysql_select_db("alanay_eu") or die ('Data error:' . mysql_error());

        $post = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['post']); 

        $query="INSERT INTO Posts (post) VALUES ('$post')";

        mysql_query($query) or die ('Error updating database' . mysql_error());
    }
?>

<center>
  <form method="post" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>">
      <textarea name="post" rows="12" cols="60" spellcheck="false">
      Example Comment</textarea> <br/>
      <input name="submit" type="submit" value="submit" /> <br/>
      <textarea rows="12" cols="60" spellcheck="false"></textarea> <br/>
      <textarea rows="12" cols="60" spellcheck="false"></textarea>
  </form>
</center>

Answer 1

Alter the table and add a timestamp:

ALTER TABLE Posts ADD postDate TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP;

Then order and limit by postDate:

SELECT post FROM Posts ORDER BY postDate DESC LIMIT 2

Iterate through the results and echo out the post inside the textarea tag.

IMPORTANT

mysql_* functions are deprecated, and should no longer be used. Look into mysqli or PDO.

Also, use htmlentities() with $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] to protect against XSS. See this question for more info.

An example using mysqli:

//I usually put the connection in a separate file, and include it as needed
$mysqli = mysqli_connect("myhost","myuser","mypassw","mydb") or die("Error " . mysqli_error($mysqli)); 

$stmt = $mysqli->prepare("SELECT post FROM Posts ORDER BY postDate LIMIT 2"); 
$stmt->execute();
$stmt->bind_result($post);
while($stmt->fetch()) {
    $post = htmlentities($post, ENT_QUOTES, "UTF-8");
    echo "<textarea rows='12' cols='60' spellcheck='false'>$post</textarea> <br/>";
}