Efficient Method To Display Group Title Once — PHP/MySQL/jQuery - php

Question

There are three tables in MySQL: Employees, Branches, Departments. I need information to appear in the following way:
ATLANTA Branch Delivery Department Phillip J. Fry Phone: 123456
Engineering Department Turanga Leela Phone: 123457
Bender Rodriguez Phone: 123458
The simple PHP code currently:
1) Takes rows from three tables (simple SELECT query with JOIN)
2) Puts them in row (mysql_fetch_assoc)
3) Displays using the PHP While loop
The result is then like this:
ATLANTA Branch Delivery Department Phillip J. Fry Phone: 123456
ATLANTA Branch Engineering Department Turanga Leela Phone: 123457
ATLANTA Branch Engineering Department Bender Rodriguez Phone: 123458
What technique (JS, jQuery, Ajax) or method can you recommend so I can pull row information using only one query and not duplicate the Branch name and Department name?
UPDATE: If I put the branch name outside the loop (using While loop), there would be multiple loops: 1) To get a branch, 2) To get a department, 3) To get all employees in that department. Loop.
UPDATE: Sharing the code:
<?php
// Create connection
$connection = mysql_connect('localhost','root', '') or die('Connection error.');
mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'", $connection);
mysql_select_db("eReference");
// Check Employees
$query = "SELECT Employees.fName, Employees.lName, Department.deptName, Branch.branchName, ".
"FROM Employees ".
"LEFT JOIN Department ".
"ON Employees.department = Department.id ".
"LEFT JOIN Branch ".
"ON Employees.branch = Branch.id ;";
$result = mysql_query($query, $connection) or die(mysql_error());
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
?>
<h2><?php echo $row['branchName']; ?></h2>
<?php if ($row['deptName']) echo "<h3>" . $row['deptName'] . "</h3>"; ?>
<h4><?php echo $row['fName'] . " " . $row['lName']; ?></h4></p>
<?php
}
?>

Answer 1

<?php
$i = 1; // to be incremented after printing branchName once
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
if($i == 1) { ?>
<h2><?php echo $row['branchName']; $i ++; ?></h2>
<?php } ?>
<?php if ($row['deptName']) echo "<h3>" . $row['deptName'] . "</h3>"; ?>
<h4><?php echo $row['fName'] . " " . $row['lName']; ?></h4></p>
<?php } ?>
Just add a variable $i = 1 and check before printing if it is equal to 1. After printing it for first time, increment it.
It is just addition of an if statement.
Hope this helps.

Answer 2

This is how I would do it.
Create a multi-dimensional array with the data, and iterate through the array to render the output.
This will not be the most efficient in terms of memory usage, but unless you have thousands of rows of data, it probably won't be an issue.
The benefit of this, is that the html rendering code is much simpler and easier to understand, plus sql and html are not intermingled. (which is good for code maintenance)
<?php
// Create connection
$connection = mysql_connect('localhost','root', '') or die('Connection error.');
mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'", $connection);
mysql_select_db("eReference");
// Check Employees
$query = "SELECT Employees.fName, Employees.lName, Department.deptName, Branch.branchName, ".
"FROM Employees ".
"LEFT JOIN Department ".
"ON Employees.department = Department.id ".
"LEFT JOIN Branch ".
"ON Employees.branch = Branch.id ;";
// note you probably want to add an order by statement here too, to ensure consistent sorting
$result = mysql_query($query, $connection) or die(mysql_error());
$data = array();
// build a multi-dimensional array from the result set
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
$data[($row['branchName'])][($row['deptName'])][] = array(
'name' => "{$row['fName']} {$row['lName']}",
'phone' => $row['phone'] // add phone, doesn't exist in original query, but just to illustrate how it would work
);
}
// sql finishes here
?>
<?php
// html rendering
// use htmlentities to escape any html chars, such as < > etc
foreach ($data as $branchName => $departments) {
echo '<h2>',htmlentities($branchName),'</h2>';
foreach ($departments as $deptName => $employees) {
foreach ($employees as $employee) {
echo '<h3>',htmlentities($deptName),'</h3>';
echo '<h4>',htmlentities($employee['name']),'</h4>';
echo '<h4>',htmlentities($employee['phone']),'</h4>';
}
}
}
?>

Answer 3

The result gotten from your sql should be an array so use a while loop to iterate throw the array while echo the result of the current index

Answer 4

Maybe this will work..
<?php
$deptName;
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
{
if ($row['deptName'])
{
if ($deptName != $row['deptName'])
{
echo "<h3>" . $row['deptName'] . "</h3>";
$deptName = $row['deptName'];
}
}
}
?>

Answer 5

$result = mysql_query($query, $connection) or die(mysql_error());
$newarray = array();
$i = 0;
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
$newarray[$i]['deptName'] = $row['deptName'];
$newarray[$i]['fName'] = $row['fName'];
$newarray[$i]['lName'] = $row['lName'];
$i++;
}
<h2><?php echo $newarray[0]['branchName']; ?></h2>
while($newarray){
?>
<?php if ($newarray['deptName']) echo "<h3>" . $newarray['deptName'] . "</h3>"; ?>
<h4><?php echo $newarray['fName'] . " " . $newarray['lName']; ?></h4></p>
}
?>

Answer 6

So, this is what it did:
$query = "SELECT Employees.lName, Employees.fName, Employees.mName, Position.position, ".
"department.deptName, department.deptId, ".
"Branch.branchName, Branch.branchId, ContactInformation.* ".
"FROM Employees ".
"LEFT JOIN Position ".
"ON Employees.position = Position.id ".
"LEFT JOIN Department ".
"ON Employees.department = Department.deptId ".
"LEFT JOIN Branch ".
"ON Employees.branch = Branch.branchId ".
"LEFT JOIN ContactInformation ".
"ON Employees.contactInformation = ContactInformation.id ".
"ORDER BY Employees.branch, Employees.department ASC;";
$result = mysql_query($query, $connection) or die(mysql_error());
$arrayOfEmployees = array();
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
$arrayOfEmployees[($row['branchName'])][($row['deptName'])][] = array(
'lName' => $row['lName'],
'fName' => $row['fName'],
'mName' => $row['mName'],
'position' => $row['position'],
'lPhone1' => $row['lPhone1'],
'lPhone2' => $row['lPhone2'],
'mPhone' => $row['mPhone'],
'fax' => $row['fax'],
'office' => $row['office'],
'email' => $row['email']
);
}
foreach($arrayOfEmployees as $branchName => $arrayOfDepartments) {
echo "<h2>".$branchName."</h2>";
foreach($arrayOfDepartments as $deptName => $arrayOfEmployeeContacts) {
echo '<h3>',htmlentities($deptName),'</h3>';
foreach($arrayOfEmployeeContacts as $employeeContacts) {
echo "<h4>".$employeeContacts["lName"]." ".$employeeContacts["fName"]." ".$employeeContacts["mName"]."</h4>";
echo "<p>";
if($employeeContacts["position"]) echo $employeeContacts["position"]."<br>";
$num = $employeeContacts["lPhone1"];
if($employeeContacts["lPhone1"]) echo "+".substr($num,0,1)." (".substr($num,1,4).") "." ".substr($num,5,2)."-".substr($num,7,2)."-".substr($num,9,2)."<br>";
$num = $employeeContacts["lPhone2"];
if($employeeContacts["lPhone2"]) echo "+".substr($num,0,1)." (".substr($num,1,4).") "." ".substr($num,5,2)."-".substr($num,7,2)."-".substr($num,9,2)."<br>";
$num = $employeeContacts["mPhone"];
if($employeeContacts["mPhone"]) echo "+".substr($num,0,1)." (".substr($num,1,3).") "." ".substr($num,4,3)."-".substr($num,7,2)."-".substr($num,9,2)."<br>";
$num = $employeeContacts["fax"];
if($employeeContacts["fax"]) echo "+".substr($num,0,1)." (".substr($num,1,4).") "." ".substr($num,5,2)."-".substr($num,7,2)."-".substr($num,9,2)."<br>";
if($employeeContacts["email"]) echo "".$employeeContacts["email"]."<br>";
if($employeeContacts["office"]) echo "Кабинет — ".$employeeContacts["office"];
echo "</p>";
}
}
}
Tested. The solution works well dynamically — just add more branches and departments into the database. Here is the efficiency check against the method I originally used (in microseconds):
Array-based Original
1 1.015 1.012
2 1.016 1.02
3 1.026 1.013
4 1.015 1.002
5 1.026 1.02
6 1.014 1.02
7 1.013 1.019
8 1.005 1.014
9 1.013 1.006
10 1.021 1.015
Average 1.0164 1.0141