MySQL GROUP by or using PHP? - php

Question

I have an issue that seems to be quiet easy but I just would like to ask how you would solve it:
In a MySQL-table there is the following structure:
provider artist
a 1
a 2
a 3
b 4
Now it is necessary to echo a list in HTML like:
provider a
1
2
3
provider b
4
I stuck at the point where I would like to group the results and echo them out with for-each and while loop.
The main idea is quiet simple like:
<?php $query = mysqli->query("SELECT * FROM `table` GROUP by provider");
foreach GROUP {?>
echo some styling HTML-code for each group of headline;
<?php while ($data= $query->fetch_assoc()){?>
echo some styling HTML-code for each list-item;
<?php};?>
Thanks in advance.
UPDATE:
Thanks for answering.
The solution fro RiggsFolly seems to work fine. There is just a small problem with the HTML. There is a surrounding div-tag that wont be closed when adding the HTML code in that line:
echo 'provider '. $data->provider;
The problem is that the while loop needs to be in the div. The closing div-tag is missing for every
if ( $current_provider != $data->provider ) {
Here is the original HTML-code:
<?php
$service = $db->query("SELECT * FROM `system` ORDER BY provider, artist");
$current_provider = NULL;
while ($data = $service->fetch_object()) {
if ( $current_provider != $data->provider ) {// new provider?>
<div class="service">
<p class="lower">
<?php echo $data->provider;?>
</p>
<?php
$current_provider = $data->provider;
}?>
<a href='?artist=<?php echo $data->artist;?>'><?php echo "/".$data->artist;?</a><br/>
<?php };?>
</div><!--service -->
The list-items will be shown nicely. But when looking into the Source code you can see that the closing div-tag is missing. Thanks
Kind regards.

Answer 1

It would seem simpler to not use a GROUP BY especially as it will not provide you with the data that you want. So instead just select them all and sort them by provider and maybe artist as a sub sort like so
<?php
$result = $mysqli->query("SELECT * FROM `table` ORDER BY provider, artist");
$current_provider = NULL;
while ($data = $result->fetch_object()){
if ( $current_provider != $data->provider ) {
// new provider
echo 'provider '. $data->provider;
$current_provider = $data->provider;
}
echo $data->artist;
}
?>
AFTER UPDATE:
<?php
$service = $db->query("SELECT * FROM `system` ORDER BY provider, artist");
$current_provider = NULL;
while ($data = $service->fetch_object()) {
if ( $current_provider != $data->provider ) {
if ( $current_provider !== NULL ) {
echo '</div>';
}
echo '<div class="service">';
echo '<p class="lower">' . $data->provider . '</p>';
$current_provider = $data->provider;
}
echo '<a href="?artist=' . $data->artist '">' .
$data->artist . '</a><br/>';
}
echo '</div>';

Answer 2

How about that.
<?php $query = mysqli->query("SELECT * FROM `table`");
$current_group = array();
while ($data= $query->fetch_assoc()){
if(in_array($data['provider'],$current_group)){
echo "<h1>New Group" . $data['provider'] ."</h1>";
$current_group[] = $data['provider']
}
echo $data['artist'] . "<br/>";
}