MySQL PHP nested results - php

Question

I have 3 tables:
profile
id | fname | policy
users
id | fullname | claimnum
and returnprod
claim_id | prodname | description
My SQL is this:
("SELECT *
,CONCAT(fname, ' ' ,lname) AS fullName
,CONCAT(firstname, ' ' ,lastname) AS InsName
,a.address AS ADDRESS
,a.city AS CITY
,a.state AS STATE
,a.zip AS ZIP
,a.phone AS PHONE
,a.fax AS FAX
,a.email AS EMAIL
FROM profile a
INNER JOIN returnprod b ON a.policy = b.claim_id
INNER JOIN users c ON a.adjuster_id = c.id
WHERE date >= '$Start' AND date <= '$End'
Jump ahead a little bit to the loop
`$products[]= $row;`
`foreach ($products as $product)
{
if ($row['policy'] === $product['claim_id']) {
$objPHPExcel->getActiveSheet()->SetCellValue('B'.$rowcount,$product['product']);
$objPHPExcel->getActiveSheet()->SetCellValue('C'.$rowcount, $product['comment']);
$objPHPExcel->getActiveSheet()->SetCellValue('D'.$rowcount, $product['anotes']);
$objPHPExcel->getActiveSheet()->SetCellValue('E'.$rowcount, $product['price']);
}`
This is working fine if there is only one product. The result will look something like this...
row 1: claim_id | firstname | adjuster name
row 2: productname | description | etc
If I have more than one product this happens...
row 1: claim_id | firstname | adjuster name
row 2: productname | description | etc
row 3: claim_id | firstname | adjuster name
row 4: productname | description | etc
row 5: productname | description | etc
Instead of grouping all the products together and displaying all of them below the profile information it is giving me the first result under the profile then giving me the profile information again with the first product and then the second product.
How do I go about grouping all products underneath the profile the first time?
Example:
row 1: claim_id | firstname | adjuster name
row 2: productname | description | etc
row 3: productname | description | etc
Thank you for taking the time to read through this.

Answer 1

$products[] = $row seems to indicate that this is not the only loop; more context might help. At the least, you will want to sort your DB results by whatever you intend to group by (ORDER BY a.id, a.policy). Then you could keep a reference to the last-seen policy and skip the header if it matches.
$last_id = '';
foreach ($rows as $row) {
if (! $row['policy'] === $last_id ) {
// Write claim_id | firstname | adjuster name
}
// Write productname | description | etc
$last_id = $row['policy'];
}
Assuming that is what you are after...

Answer 2

I went about this a different way.
instead of using FOREACH I ended up using WHILE.
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)){
// CODE TO QUERY PROFILE INFORMATION
$productquery=("SELECT * FROM returnprod WHERE claim_id = '$POLICY'");
while($product = mysql_fetch_array($prods)){
//CODE TO QUERY THE PRODUCTS ASSOCIATED WITH THE PROFILE
}
}
Then I added GROUP BY a.policy in the $result