Output by Group - maybe foreach? - php

Question

I am on a project where I put JSON data from a external API to the MySQL database. This works fine.
The output with GROUPING and ORDER BY is not really how I want it
What I got so far :
SELECT *, GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT (task))
FROM time_summary
GROUP BY projectName
ORDER BY clientName
The table looks like this:
id clientName project task
1 firm One online banner
2 firm One print folder
3 firm Two water with gas
4 firm One online website
5 firm Two water with gas
6 firm Two water with gas
Output is:
firmOne
online
banner, website
print
folder
Now the Question:
The grouped tasks are seperated by commas.
I have a while loop output - but I need each task in a new line (grouped by the project) like
firmOne
online
banner website
print
folder
PHP Code is like this one:
$new = 1;
$last_client = 'initial';
while($row = _mysql_fetch_array($sql)) {
if($last_client != $row['clientName'] && $last_client != 'initial') {
echo '<div class="cb h20"></div>';
$new = 1;
}
if($new == 1) {
echo '<span class="yellow-small">' . $row["clientName"] . '</span>';
$new = 0;
}
?>
<b><?=$row['projectName'];?></b><br>
<?=$row['GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT (task))'];?>
}
How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

Aggregating the tasks into CSV only to then split them apart again in your PHP code does not sound like a good option to me. Would the following simple query not give you the data you want:
SELECT DISTINCT
clientName,
project,
task
FROM time_summary
ORDER BY
clientName,
project,
task
This query would report, for each client and project, only the distinct list of tasks. Now you can iterate over this result set in your PHP code to generate the output you want:
$client = null;
$project = null;
while ($row = _mysql_fetch_array($sql)) {
$curr_client = $row['clientName'];
if ($curr_client != $client) {
echo $curr_client."<br>";
$client = $curr_client;
}
$curr_project = $row['projectName'];
if ($curr_project != $project) {
echo " ".$curr_project."<br>";
$project = $curr_project;
}
echo " ".$row['task']."<br>";
}
Output:
As a disclaimer, I focused on the query and presentation logic needed to get the display you wanted, not on the PHP code. That might be the topic of another discussion altogether.
Here is a link to a small PHP demo which shows that the presentation logic is reliable:
Rextester

Answer 2

If you simply add the line
$holder = str_replace(",", "<br>", $row['GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT (taskName))']);
Right before your
<?=$row['GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT (taskName))'];?>
And then replace your line
<?=$row['GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT (taskName))'];?>
with
<?=$holder;?>
This replaces the comma with a <br> and will force the second value to the next line.