Catogerizing by year in mysql and php - php

Question

I am trying to write a program of photoalbums in simple PHP, but i want to make it a little more advanced then i used to do.
Usually i wrote it like this:
<?php $query = mysql_query("SELECT year FROM photo");
while($record = mysql_fetch_object($query)) {
echo $record->year."<br>";
$query2 = mysql_query("SELECT albumName, url FROM photo WHERE year = '".$year."'");
while($album = mysql_fetch_object($query2)){
echo "".$albumName."<br>";
}
} ?>
As you would understand it's really bad to have two while loops in one, so i want to do it differently. I want to learn how to do this better. The thing is, I don't know a name for this so it's difficult to search on this subject. Is there anyone able to hand me a snippet of code, a source or something to get me on the way?
Thank you so much.

Answer 1

You could do
<?php
$year = ''; // create a generic variable that will hold the album year
$query = mysql_query("SELECT albumName, url, year FROM photo ORDER BY year"); // Sort by year
while($album = mysql_fetch_object($query)) {
if($album->year != $year){ // check if $album->year is the same as the $year value
echo $album->year."<br>"; // if not the same echo the year
}
$year = $album->year; // set the $year value to the $album->year
echo "".$album->albumName."<br>";
}
?>

Answer 2

What if you do this:
<?php $query = mysql_query("SELECT albumName, url, year FROM photo");
while($record = mysql_fetch_object($query)) {
echo $record->year."<br>";
echo "".$albumName."<br>";
}
?>
What would be wrong?
Now your code might produce an album more than one times, if there are many albums per year.