How to group posts by category using PHP & MySql? - php

Question

I’ve tried using GROUP BY in my query but that only returns one post per category. This is an example of what is returned with my current setup. What I need is for all posts with the same category to be grouped together, can someone point me in the right direction? Thanks for your time.

Answer 1

Like suggested by Charlotte, you could group your posts in an associative array, with the categories as keys.
<?php
// Connecting to database
$categories = array(); // Create an empty array
while ($post = mysqli_fetch_array($result)) {
if(!array_key_exists($post['category'], $categories)) { // Check if the category is already present
$categories[$post['category']] = array(); // Create an array indexed with the category name
}
$categories[$post['category']][] = $post; // Add the post to the category
}
?>
Now you have to iterate twice : to display the categories and to display each post in the category.
When I have to deal with nested foreach to render html, I preferably use inline foreach.
The rendering of the posts should look like :
<?php foreach ($categories as $category => $posts) : ?>
<h2><?php echo $category; ?></h2>
<?php foreach ($posts as $post) : ?>
<a href='article.php?id=<?php echo $post['post_id']; ?>' ><?php echo $post['title']; ?></a>
<p>Posted on <?php echo date('d-m-y h:i:s',strtotime( $post['posted'] ) );?> In <a href='category5.php?id=<?php echo $post['category_id']; ?>' ><?php echo $post['category']; ?></a>
</p>
<?php endforeach; ?>
<hr/>
<?php endforeach; ?>
Edit: I ometted the opening and closing php tags in the first block of code.
If you assemble the two blocks of code in your php file, it should work.