Altering a query to join 3 tables together - php

Question

In my database, I have 3 tables.
Jokes:
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `jokes` (
`joke_id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`joke` varchar(1024) NOT NULL,
`category_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
`vote` int(255) NOT NULL,
`date_added` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
PRIMARY KEY (`joke_id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;
Category:
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `category` (
`category_id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`name` varchar(51) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`category_id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;
And finally, Comments:
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `comments` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`name` varchar(40) NOT NULL,
`comment` text NOT NULL,
`joke_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
`post_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
`date` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;
I need to join all three tables together to get the category name of a joke, the joke itself, and the unique comments correlating to that specific joke_id.
For the moment I can only join two tables where the joke_id = 1. This will return the comments for that joke.
This function is stored in my read controller, with the name of Joke:
public function joke($joke_id = FALSE)
{
if ($joke_id === FALSE) redirect('main'); //go to default controller
$data['results'] = $this->comments_m->getComments($joke_id, $this->uri->segment(2));
$this->load->view('template/header');
$this->load->view('template/sidebar');
$this->load->view('content/read', $data);
$this->load->view('template/footer');
}
The model (getjokes_m) has a function called readJokes which grabs only the category, the joke, and the joke_id to read that one specific joke:
function readJokes($joke_id)
{
$query = $this->db->query("SELECT j.*, c.name FROM jokes j LEFT JOIN category c ON c.category_id = j.category_id WHERE joke_id = '$joke_id'") or die("No results found" );
//displays the results
return $query->result();
}
For the moment, this results in only getting the category name of a joke, and the joke itself. What i want is to grab the comments for this one joke as well. How can I alter my query to return the information that I need?
Edit:
This query seems to work:
SELECT c.name, j.*, co.* FROM jokes j LEFT JOIN category c ON c.category_id = j.category_id LEFT JOIN comments co ON co.joke_id = j.joke_id WHERE j.joke_id = '$joke_id'"
but at the same time, it grabs the joke as many times as the joke has been commented for some reason. I.e the joke has 6 comments, the joke is shown 6 times.

Answer 1

EDIT:
SELECT j.joke AS 'Joke', c.name AS 'Category', 'Comments : ' AS 'Comments'
FROM jokes j
LEFT JOIN category c ON c.category_id = j.category_id
WHERE j.joke_id = '1'
UNION
SELECT '' AS 'Joke', '' AS 'Category', c.comment AS 'Comments'
FROM comments c
WHERE c.joke_id = '1'
LIMIT 0 , 30
I don't have your data, it's hard to test, but you may want to try this one.
It's one query. A cleaner way would be to get the joke then for that joke id get the comments.

Answer 2

SELECT c.*, j.*, co.*
FROM jokes j
INNER JOIN category c ON c.category_id = j.category_id
INNER JOIN comments co ON co.joke_id = j.joke_id
WHERE j.joke_id = '1'
SQLFIDDLE DEMO

Answer 3

The query you show here is what you need
SELECT c.name, j.*, co.* FROM jokes j LEFT JOIN category c ON c.category_id = j.category_id LEFT JOIN comments co ON co.joke_id = j.joke_id WHERE j.joke_id = '$joke_id'"
or you can hit a separate query for comments by providing joke id. in fact using a separate query is good,as it reduce the fetch data volume if the number of comments is more.