Report generation based from mysql query - php

Question

I have this 3 tables namely form, form_responses, metrics with the following structure
form
->id
->phone
->calldatetime
form_reponses
->id
->form_id
->metrics_id
->response
metrics
->id
->description
->question
And I want to make report with a format something like this
|Metrics Description|Metrics Question|Phone1|Phone2|Phone3|Phone4
|___________________|________________|______|______|______|______
| Sample | Sample | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes
Is it possbile to this output just by the mysql query alone? Please note that the Phone1, Phone2, Phone3... is scaling horizontally. Originally I need that output in the excel file I have already tried this using Laravel PHP and http://www.maatwebsite.nl/laravel-excel/docs
$query = "SELECT id, phone FROM qcv.forms WHERE calldatetime >= '$from' AND calldatetime <= '$to' ORDER BY id ASC LIMIT 250 ;";
$phone = DB::connection('mysql')->select($query);
$metrics = Metric::all();
$metric_start = 10;
$start = "D";
$count = 10;
foreach ($phone as $key => $value2) // Populate Phone Numbers Horizontally
{
$sheet->cell($start.'9', $value2->phone);
// This will fill the responses for each number
foreach ($metrics as $key => $value)
{
$responses = FormResponses::where('form_id', '=', $value2->id)->where('metrics_id', '=', $value->id)->get();
$sheet->cell($start.$count, $responses[0]->response);
$count++;
}
$start++;
$count = 10;
}
foreach ($metrics as $key => $value) // Populate Metrics Vertically
{
$sheet->cell('C'.$metric_start, $value->question);
$sheet->cell('B'.$metric_start, $value->description);
$sheet->cell('A'.$metric_start, $value->metrics_name);
$metric_start++;
}
But seems this method is really slow especially in processing so I'm wondering if I could do the output in mysql command alone?

Answer 1

To get multiple sub-records per row in a one-to-many relationship using SQL, you would have to use a sub-query:
SELECT
m.description,
m.question,
(select phone from form f1 where f1.id = m.id and ...
/* some other unique criteria */) as Phone1,
(select phone from form f2 where f2.id = m.id and ...
/* some other unique criteria */) as Phone2,
(select phone from form f3 where f3.id = m.id and ...
/* some other unique criteria */) as Phone3,
(select phone from form f4 where f4.id = m.id and ...
/* some other unique criteria */) as Phone4
FROM metrics m
However...you may not have any columns to uniquely identify each form in this way...and your SQL engine may not allow a 3rd level of nesting of sub-queries (which is another way to individually select records from the same table).
So here's one other variation that would work. It should be slightly less code and fewer database connections, so it should perform better, even if you find it less intuitive. Here's the SQL portion:
SELECT
m.description,
m.question,
f.phone
FROM metrics m
INNER JOIN form f ON f.id = m.id
And then in PHP:
$lastid = '';
$phone_count = 0;
foreach ($record as $key => $value) {
$phone[$phone_count] = $value->phone;
$phone_count++;
if ($lastid != $value->id) {
// new record
$sheet->cell ( /* whatever */ );
$phone_count = 0;
}
$lastid = $value->id;
}