Getting columns with the same name from different Mysql tables - php

Question

I have a table for comments ("event_comments") to different events with the following columns:
post_id
event_id
username
comment
date
I want to be able to retrieve this info from the database and also be able to print the username, first name and last name; for this, I thought of using INNER JOIN, but it is not working for the following reason: I have 3 different profile types (3 different tables) "students", "guardians", "teachers" and when I try to use the INNER JOIN using "username" I get an error message saying that Column 'username' in from clause is ambiguous.
SELECT event_comments.post_id, event_comments.event_id, event_comments.username, event_comments.comment, event_comments.date,
students.first_name, students.last_name, students.picture,
guardians.first_name, guardians.last_name, guardians.picture,
teachers.first_name, teachers.last_name, teachers.picture
FROM event_comments
INNER JOIN students
INNER JOIN guardians
INNER JOIN teachers
USING (username)
ORDER BY date DESC
LIMIT 20
I tried to do this and it worked, but it only shows 1 comment per user; if the user has more than 1 comment then the info is ignored:
SELECT event_comments.post_id, event_comments.event_id, event_comments.username, event_comments.comment, event_comments.date,
students.first_name, students.last_name, students.picture,
guardians.first_name, guardians.last_name, guardians.picture,
teachers.first_name, teachers.last_name, teachers.picture
FROM event_comments
INNER JOIN students
INNER JOIN guardians
INNER JOIN teachers
GROUP BY username
ORDER BY date DESC
LIMIT 20
Does anybody how to get the INNER JOINs to work? is there a better way to do what I want? I hope I explained myself well.
Thanks!

Answer 1

do it like this:
SELECT event_comments.post_id, event_comments.event_id, event_comments.username, event_comments.comment, event_comments.date,
students.first_name, students.last_name, students.picture,
guardians.first_name, guardians.last_name, guardians.picture,
teachers.first_name, teachers.last_name, teachers.picture
FROM event_comments
INNER JOIN students
on event_comments.username=students.username
INNER JOIN guardians
on event_comments.username=guardians.username
INNER JOIN teachers
on event_comments.username=teachers.username
ORDER BY date DESC
LIMIT 20
This will work but assuming that a username from one table is not present in other tables, this will result into 0 rows.
a more logical approach would be to select each table then union it to join every result set like this :
SELECT e.post_id, e.event_id, e.username, e.comment, e_comments.date,
s.first_name, s.last_name, s.picture
from event_comments e
inner join students s
on e.username=g.username
UNION SELECT e.post_id, e.event_id, e.username, e.comment, e_comments.date,
g.first_name, g.last_name, g.picture
from event_comments e
inner join guardians g
on e.username=g.username
UNION SELECT e.post_id, e.event_id, e.username, e.comment, e_comments.date,
t.first_name, t.last_name, t.picture
from event_comments e
inner join teacher t
on e.username=t.username
EDIT:
To explain better about the query it just does this simple steps:
Query all comments from students using username to join post to students
Query all comments from guardians using username to join post to guardians
Query all comments from teachers using username to join post to teachers
Join results from students,guardians, teachers together

Answer 2

You need the using clause for each pair of joins:
FROM event_comments INNER JOIN
students
USING (username) INNER JOIN
guardians
USING (username) INNER JOIN
teachers
USING (username)
In MySQL, an inner join with no on clause is treated as a cross join. In other databases, an on or using clause is required for an inner join.