Show database entries separated by comma - php

Question

I have one field in the backend, where I input IDs separated by comma - ID1, ID2, ID3....These are videos in fact. All ids are stored in the field product_videos in the database (as they are typed).
How can I echo these id's on the frontend so they all show for the product?

Answer 1

Storing comma separated data in one data field is a bad idea. It is a real pain to manipulate, so you should really consider revising your db structure.
You haven't shown your data structure, so I'll give a basic example and then explain how it can be improved. My example assumes product_videos is linked to particular users:
table: `users`
| user_id | user_name | product_videos |
|---------|-----------|----------------|
| 1 | User1 | 1,2,3,4,6,7 |
| 2 | User2 | 5 |
You would maybe run a query
SELECT `product_videos` FROM `users` WHERE `user_name` = 'User1'
This would give you one row, with a comma separate value - you would then need to use something like PHP's explode() to convert it into an array and then loop through that array. That is a very bad method (and it will only become harder as you try to do more advanced things).
Instead, it would be easier to use a link table. Imagine:
table: `users`
| user_id | user_name |
|---------|-----------|
| 1 | User1 |
| 2 | User2 |
table: `videos`
| video_id | user_id |
|-----------|---------|
| 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 1 |
| 3 | 1 |
| 4 | 1 |
| 5 | 2 |
| 6 | 1 |
| 7 | 1 |
In this example, each video is a separate row in a db table (and each video is linked to an existing user). Each row is readily able to be handled independently. This makes it really easy to handle extra data for each video, such as a title, runtime length, date of uploading, etc.
You would then need to run a JOIN query. e.g.
SELECT `videos`.`video_id` FROM `videos`
INNER JOIN `users` ON `users`.`user_id` = `videos`.`user_id`
WHERE `users`.`user_name` = 'User1'
In PHP, you would do something like:
$q = mysql_query("SELECT `videos`.`video_id` FROM `videos` INNER JOIN `users` ON `users`.`user_id` = `videos`.`user_id` WHERE `users`.`user_name` = 'User1'");
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($q)) {
echo "VIDEO ID = " . $row["video_id"] . "<br/>";
}