Removing Duplicate Entries from Join - php

Question

I am running into a problem that I feel like is somewhat simple in principle, so I may not be going about this the correct way. I essentially am listing "events" on a page that have their own respective "comments". I am joining to two tables and hoping to run a foreach loop to get all of the events along with their comments. Unfortunately, if an event has more than one comment it's reprinting the original event because of the join (i suspect). What is a better way to achieve what I am trying to accomplish?
In my model:
function get_events()
{
$this->db->select('*');
$this->db->from('events');
$this->db->join('comments', 'comments.event_id = events.id', 'left');
$query = $this->db->get();
if ($query->num_rows() > 0)
{
return $query->result();
}
}
And in the view:
<?php foreach($events as $row): ?>
<div class="event">
<?= $row->event; ?>
<?php if($row->comment == null): ?><br>
<i>No comments.</i>
<?php else: ?>
<div class="comment">
<?= $row->comment; ?>
</div>
<?php endif; ?>
</div>
<?php endforeach; ?>
In the db I basically have 3 events, one with 2 comments, one with just 1, and one with zero comments. The first event prints twice, each with a different comment, the second event prints fine with its own comment and the third one works perfectly, printing "no comments" since there is nothing joined with it.
Hopefully this all makes sense!
MT

Answer 1

You can check wether you already echoed the event:
<?php
$lastEvent = null;
foreach($events as $row) {
if($row->event != $lastEvent) {
echo '<div class="event">' . $row->event;
}
if($row->comment == null) {
echo '<br><i>No comments.</i>';
} else {
echo '<div class="comment">' . $row->comment . '</div>';
}
if($row->event != $lastEvent) {
echo '</div>';
}
$lastEvent = $row->event;
}