How to match data from two different database tables and display it - php

Question

I am looking for a solution which would withdraw essential data used to match other data from a different table. Then I would like to display this data inside a blade in a form of a table.
Inside the database, I have a "matching" entity which stores user's credentials which I would like to use for matching (for example desired price of the product). Entity contains "peopleID" as "matching" belongs to website users. When user is created, we assign matching options which are getting stored inside that "matching" entity. The number of rows inside Matching entity depends on the number of counties chosen during user creation stage.
I know that to withdraw matching data from the database I need to use a foreach loop.
The problem I have is when I output data inside the blade. For some reason it matches products only with the last item from an array. It should match prodtucts with all matching credentials.
Code:
$matchings = Match::where('PeopleID', '=', $id)->get();
$sales = DB::table('sales');
foreach ($matchings as $matching)
{
$county = $matching->county;
$sales->where('county', '=', $county);
}
$results = $sales->get();
So for one of the customers I have two matchings with different "counties". It only displays data for the last one added. How could I make it display data for other matching which contains a different county. I hope you know what I mean.
Thanks for any help.
Update - Major part of the code is done. Thank you for your help.
The second question is about adding the rest of matching options. As stated before the number of matches depends on the number of counties added. Each match has its own attributes. The idea is to show matched results for each county.
I know I will need some if statements to do this.
Here is an example which I would like to implement:
$maxprice = $match->maxprice;
$minprice = $match->minprice;
$brand_a = $match->brand_a;
$brand_b = $match->brand_b;
if($maxprice != '0')
{
$sales = DB::table('sales')->where('maxprice', '<=', $maxprice);
}
if($minprice != '0')
{
$sales = DB::table('sales')->where('minprice', '>=', $minprice);
}
if($brand_a == '1')
{
$sales = DB::table('sales')->where('brand_a', '1');
}
if($brand_b == '1')
{
$sales = DB::table('sales')->where('brand_b', '1');
}
To this code:
$user = User::find($id); // get our User with the Id (person id?)
$matches = $user->matches; // get all the matches
// or you could one line the above: $matches = User::find($id)->matches;
// get all the counties in the returned matches, could use pluck() method in higher version of laravel
$counties = [];
foreach($matches as $match) {
$counties[] = $match->county;
}
$results = DB::table('sales')->whereIn('county', $counties)->get();
Many Thanks for your help!
#update
Relationships:
Match:
public function people()
{
return $this->belongsTo('People', 'PeopleID', 'PeopleID');
}
People:
public function matches()
{
return $this->hasMany('Match', 'PeopleID', 'PeopleID');
}
I have a connection between those as Match holds people's "search" credentials. The first solution which you have provided works perfectly. Now, this solution filtered out sales by county which is a good move as now they need to be filtered by minimum and maximum price (minprice, maxprice) and other credentials such as brand_a and brand_b.
The idea of brand_a and brand_b:
Checkboxes are responsible for changing brand_a and brand_b value inside Matching. If these are checked the values inside Matching entity become '1'. If these are not checked they become '0' which means that sales don't have to be filtered out by those values.
Sales entity contains "Holdings" attribute. The value of "Holdings" can be brand_a or brand_b. Sales also contains "Price".
So, to make this clear:
Sale Entity contains: SaleID, Price, Holdings, County.
Holdings are values: brand_a or brand_b.
Price is just a number.
County is plain text.
Matching Entity contains: PeopleID, MinimumPrice, MaximumPrice, brand_a, brand_b, county.
PeopleID is a foreign key. We need to know which matching belongs to what user.
(there can be multiple matchings for one user depending on the number of counties chosen).
MinimumPrice and MaximumPrice are numbers.
brand_a and brand_b are the values (1 or 0) depending if the checkboxes were checked.
County is the name of a county.
Now, if person 1543 (peopleID = 1543) contains 3 matchings, each containing different search credentials.
1st:
PeopleID: 1543
MinimumPrice: 1000
MaximumPrice: 7000
brand_a: 0
brand_b: 1
county: county_a
2nd:
PeopleID: 1543
MinimumPrice: 2500
MaximumPrice: 10000
brand_a: 1
brand_b: 1
county: county_f
3rd:
PeopleID: 1543
MiniumPrice: 2000
MaximumPrice:9500
brand_a: 0
brand_b: 0
county: county_d
I need to match this data against the data that is inside the Sales. There can be over a 1,000 different sales with different prices etc. I just need to filter them and display Sales that are desired by the person based on person's matching.
I hope this better presents you the situation. Thanks.

Answer 1

In short, I belive you need to leverage Eloquent Relationships to easily retrieve the data you desire. Read up on relationships in the docs here: https://laravel.com/docs/4.2/eloquent#relationships.
I've made some assumptions so you may need to work the following into your actual setup. Also, I found it quite difficult to 100% understand your DB structure from your question, but from what I gather from your question your DB structure is like this:
User/Person *has many* Match
(Note: Name may be wrong, but you didn't mention what it's called in the question all I can see is the word "user" and "personId")
Match *belongs to* User/Person
Based on this I think you should set up your relationships like this:
User
class User extends Eloquent {
public function matches()
{
return $this->hasMany('Match');
}
//...
}
Match
class Match extends Eloquent {
public function user()
{
return $this->belongsTo('User');
}
//...
}
Then your code can look like this:
$user = User::find($id); // get our User with the Id (person id?)
$matches = $user->matches; // get all the matches
// or you could one line the above: $matches = User::find($id)->matches;
// get all the counties in the returned matches, could use pluck() method in higher version of laravel
$counties = [];
foreach($matches as $match) {
$counties[] = $match->county;
}
$results = DB::table('sales')->whereIn('county', $counties)->get();
A better approach to this issue (I think) would be to give County it's own entity then Match would have a county_id then you can use a has many through relationship if you can link up Match, County and Sales. You can read more about has many through in the docs here: https://laravel.com/docs/4.2/eloquent#has-many-through
Also, a side point... this part of your code:
$sales->where('county', '=', $county);
will just continuously add where statements to your query which I would imagine won't return anything if there's more than one.
Just to make this clearer, imagine you have 2 counties "county_1" and county "county_2", through your for loop your query would end up like this:
WHERE COUNTY = "county_1" // first loop
AND COUNTY = "county_2" // second loop
and as you can see a match cannot be two counties at one time! So you were probably looking for ->orWhere('county', 'county_value') after the first one was added, but a better approach is to use whereIn('county', $countiesArray) which you can pass an array you've built up, which is what I've done above.
Hope this helps! Let me know if it wasn't clear.
Edit
The best approach would be to establish relationships between the Sale and Match entities. As I still don't fully understand your database schema I can't advise so well on how you would approach that. If you gave some more details it may be possible.
Alternatively, you could approach the code by building up an array which you will use for applying conditions to your query. Consider your updated question with the four if statements, anytime you're repeating yourself like that, more often that not it can be simplified.
$filters = [
'maxprice' => $match->maxprice,
'minprice' => $match->minprice,
'brand_a' => $match->brand_a,
'brand_b' => $match->brand_b,
];
$salesQuery = DB::table('sales');
foreach($filters as $key => $value) {
if($value) {
$salesQuery->where($key, $value);
}
}
$results = $salesQuery->get();
As your conditionals are a bit stricter in your code from your question, you do to it like this instead:
foreach($filters as $key => $value) {
if ($value) {
if (in_array(['brand_a', 'brand_b'], $key)) {
$salesQuery->where($key, $value);
} else if($key === 'minprice') {
$salesQuery->where($key, '>=' $value);
} else if($key === 'maxprice') {
$salesQuery->where($key, '<=' $value);
}
}
}
the good thing about this approach is that you can easily add new conditionals via the filters array without having to write a new if statement and query/where code each time.
I'll stress this probably isn't the best approach, ideally you'd leverage Eloquent Relationships, but it may be a starting point if you can't figure that out right away.