best way to display value from mysql inner join - php

Question

I haven't been coding for a while, and i started a new project lately.
In that project, i need to make a very simple inner join to associate values from 2 tables:
table questions:
id | question | order
1 | how? | 1
2 | what? | 2
3 | when? | 3
table answers:
id_question | answer | order
1 | this way | 1
1 | that way | 2
2 | this | 1
2 | that | 2
3 | now | 1
3 | later | 2
How can I correctly get the questions and related answers, and display them, ordered by order?
I did this:
SELECT id, question, Q.order as qorder, id_question, answer, A.order as aorder FROM questions as Q INNER JOIN answers as A ON Q.id = A.id_question ORDER BY qorder
which result in this:
id | question | qorder | id_question | answer | aorder
1 | how? | 1 | 1 | this way | 1
1 | how? | 1 | 1 | that way | 2
2 | what? | 2 | 2 | this | 1
2 | what? | 2 | 2 | that | 2
3 | when? | 3 | 3 | now | 1
3 | when? | 3 | 3 | later | 2
DISPLAYING RESULTS:
$same_id = -1;
while ( $poll = $qa -> fetch() ) {
if ($poll['id'] == $same_id ) {
echo '<li>'.$poll['answer'].'</li>';
}
else {
if ( $poll['id'] == $same_id+1 ) { echo '</ul>'; }
echo '<ul>'.$poll['question'];
echo '<li>'.$poll['answer'].'</li>';
$same_id = $poll['id'];
}
echo '</ul>';
}
which display:
<ul>How?
<li>this way</li>
<li>that way</li>
</ul>
<ul>What?
<li>this</li>
<li>that</li>
</ul>
<ul>When?
<li>now</li>
<li>later</li>
</ul>
it all works out, but it doesn't feel right.
First, I have the answers ordered by "luck", without specifying it in the request.
And then, the code feels too "complicated" for what it is.
I feel there is a better and cleaner way to do this kind of work.

Answer 1

You can simply use the aorder to order explicitly:
SELECT ...
FROM ...
INNER JOIN ...
ORDER BY
qorder ASC,
aorder ASC
Your code to display is alright. It could be improved by using PDOStatement::fetchAll() and foreach, but this is personal taste/preference.
$polls = $qa->fetchAll();
foreach($polls as $poll) {
// output question and answers
}