Why is this PHP-MySQL code not working properly? - php

Question

It was working before and maybe someone made changes to the code and I cant detect the problem after much debugging so hopefully someone can help.
I have an html form that lets a user choose a set of option and then on form submit, POSTS these options in an array which works perfectly fine. Then I am writing the elements of an array to a MySQL table and this is where the problem occurs. My code was working fine before but now its all weird. The outputs mix up for some reason.
Below is the array values passed and then the output below the arrays.
Here is my code that writes the array values to MySQL:
error_reporting(-1);
$arr=$_POST["itemsToAdd"];
$cal=$_POST["calendar"];
print_r($arr);
// Make a MySQL Connection
//empty table first to remove any previous old on-calls stored.
$query = "truncate table ProdOnCallSetup";
if(mysql_query($query)){
}
else{
}
foreach ($arr as &$value) {
// Insert a row of information into the table "ProdOnCallSetup"
mysql_query("INSERT INTO ProdOnCallSetup
(Email) VALUES('$value') ")
or die(mysql_error());
}
Here is the code giving the output or displaying the rows in MySQL:
<ol class=”list_style”>
<?php
//make MySQL connection
$query = "SELECT * FROM ProdOnCallSetup";
$result = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error());
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)){
echo "<li>".$row['Email']."</li>";
echo "<br />";
}
?>
</ol>
See the problem here? Even though I write them in the correct order in MySQL when I display them the order mixes up. Order is Justin, Achau, Chellatamby but when I echo is out from the DB its Achau, Chellatamby, Justin

Answer 1

Unless you specifically use an ORDER BY clause in your SELECT statement, the order in which rows are returned is indeterminate and may change.... it doesn't matter what order you added the records in, this is irrelevant... use ORDER BY...
SELECT * FROM ProdOnCallSetup ORDER BY Email
(or whatever column id you want to order them on)
If you want to order them in the order you added them to the database, you'll need an autoincrement column on the table, and order by that column