Exploding data from mysql using PHP - php

Question

I have a database table where I am storing all the values from an external xml file. Since my project requirement demands me to deal with this unnormalized data. I need to help to extract data in an appropriate way.
I have two web pages (one for categories) and one for products.My database table looks like this:
**product_id Code Name ProductRange ProductSubRange WebCategory**
1 1002 Lid 30l Crystal;Uni LIDs Household products
2 10433 Casa Basket Silver Casa Casa Hipster BASKET Kitchenware
3 17443 Casa Basket Ice White Casa;Laundry LAUNDRY BASKET Laundry products
4 13443 Garden tub Eden Eden Garden Pots Household products
5 199990 Black Lid 201 Crystal Crystal Lids Household products
The product that belong to more than one productRange is indicated my semicolon(;). For example,above product_id 1 with name "Lid 301" belongs to two Product Ranges "Crystal" and "Uni". Same is for product_id 3. However product 2 belongs to single ProductRange.
MY QUESTIONs:
1) How can I construct a query so that it could return "ProductRange" based on my query_string values of "Webcategory"? For example:
if I get "Household Products" as my WebCategory from query string, it could give me distinct like this:
Household Products
|-Crystal
|-Uni
|-Eden
Laundry Products
|-Casa
|-Laundry
Kitchenware
|-Casa
2) Based on extracted ProductRanges, I want to display products separately in my webpages according to the product range and webcategory. For example, if I choose "Crystal" from above, it could give me Products with product_id "1" and "5" respectively like this:
Household Products|
|-Crystal
|-Lid 301 (product_id=1)
|-Balck Lid 201 (product_id=5)
|-Uni
|-Lid 301 (product_id=1)
|-Eden
|-Garden Tub
Kitchenware|
|-Casa
|-Casa Basket silver
Laundry Products|
|-Casa
|-Casa Basket Ice White
|
|-Laundry
|-Casa Basket Ice White
Can anyone guide me how can I retrieve records from the database and what I will need to do as I am new to programming? I would appreciate if anyone could help me in this regard.

Answer 1

In order to get distinct product ranges based on a give WebCategory input = 'XYZ', you can use the following - don't be intimidated by the numberstable, it's just a helpful table that contains rows each with increasing integer values from 1 ... up to N where N is the maximum number of characters in your ProductRange column. These can be made by hand or using a special insert/select query like the one found here:
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Database/MySQL/A_3573-A-MySQL-Tidbit-Quick-Numbers-Table-Generation.html
SELECT DISTINCT
SUBSTRING(ProductRange FROM number FOR LOCATE(';', ProductRange, number) - number) AS ProductRange
FROM (
SELECT ProductRange, CASE number WHEN 1 THEN 1 ELSE number + 1 END number
FROM (
SELECT mydatabasetable.ProductRange, numberstable.number
FROM mydatabasetable
INNER JOIN numberstable
ON numberstable.number >= 1
AND numberstable.number <= CHAR_LENGTH(mydatabasetable.ProductRange)
WHERE WebCategory = 'XYZ'
) TT
WHERE number = 1 OR (number + 1) <= CHAR_LENGTH(ProductRange)
) TT
WHERE SUBSTRING(ProductRange FROM number FOR 1) = ';'
OR numberstable.number = 1;
In order to retrieve a result set with all values WebCategory, ProductRange and Product for your website you can use the below slightly modified version derived from the above query. So that the results will appear more meaningful at first, I added an ORDER BY clause to keep all same-category, same-product-range products in sequence one after the other. This might or might not be desired as you might prefer to do that in your application/server-script code. In that case you can remove the ORDER BY clause without doing any harm.
SELECT WebCategory,
SUBSTRING(
ProductRange
FROM number
FOR LOCATE(';', ProductRange, number) - number
) AS ProductRange,
Product
FROM (
SELECT WebCategory, ProductRange, Product,
CASE number
WHEN 1 THEN 1
ELSE number + 1
END number
FROM (
SELECT WebCategory, ProductRange, Product, numberstable.number
FROM mydatabasetable
INNER JOIN numberstable
ON numberstable.number >= 1
AND numberstable.number <= CHAR_LENGTH(ProductRange)
) TT
WHERE number = 1 OR (number + 1) <= CHAR_LENGTH(ProductRange)
) TT
WHERE SUBSTRING(ProductRange FROM number FOR 1) = ';'
OR numberstable.number = 1
ORDER BY WebCategory, ProductRange, Product

Answer 2

You are probably going to want to do a GROUP BY clause in your query and maybe an JOIN if the detailed data is in a different table. If I understand you correctly it would look something like this.
SELECT T.WebCategory, T.ProductRange, T2.Product FROM table T
INNER JOIN table2 T2 ON T2.ProductRange = T.ProductRange
WHERE T.WebCategory = 'Household products'
GROUP BY T.WebCategory, T.ProductRange, T2.Product
It is tough to test my query without having a database setup to test against, but something like the above should return what you are looking for. You will of course need to rename your columns based on the actual names in the second table. Overall though, this should get you started if I understood the question correctly.