Combine a variable with SELECT results into an INSERT statement - php

Question

I have 3 tables:
Users - uID (INT AUTO_INCREMENT), name (VARCHAR)
Movies - mID (IN AUTO_INCREMENT), title (VARCHAR)
Watched - uID (INT), mID (INT)
I'm writing a php function that constructs a query which adds records of movies watched by a particular person. Here's what I've come up with so far:
function set_watched($name, $movies){
$sql = "SET #userid = (SELECT uID FROM users WHERE name = '$name' LIMIT 1); ";
$sql .= "INSERT INTO watched (uID, mID) VALUES ('";
foreach ($movies as $index => $movie){
}
}
My question:
Is there a way to combine the #userid variable with the results of a SELECT mID FROM MOVIES WHERE title = $movie OR title = $movie [generated with foreach]?
I don't want to generate separate SELECT statements for every movie title. Perhaps I don't even have to use the #userid variable at all?

Answer 1

Try something like this:
$sql = "INSERT INTO watched (uID, mID)
SELECT User.uID, Movies.mID
FROM (SELECT uID FROM Users WHERE Users.name = '$name' LIMIT 1) AS User, Movies
WHERE ";
foreach ($movies as $index => $movie){
$sql .= "Movies.title = '$movie' OR ";
}
$sql = substr($sql, 0, -4) . ";";

Answer 2

I prefer using arrays and imploding them for this sort of an application. Also, I wouldn't try and force these two things into one query. I would either:
Modify the function parameters to accept uID as its input, instead of name
Change the logic to two queries.
Besides, PHP's mysql_query function doesn't support multiple queries, so if you're using the standard mysql functions, you can't execute two queries with one call to mysql_query.
Running with case #2, you can use something like this (untested, of course):
$sql = 'SELECT uID FROM users WHERE name = "' . $name. '" LIMIT 1';
$result = mysql_query( $sql);
$row = mysql_fetch_row( $result);
mysql_free_result( $result);
$values_array = array();
foreach ($movies as $index => $movie)
{
$values_array[] = '( "' . $row['uID'] . '", "' . $movie . '")';
}
$sql = 'INSERT INTO watched (uID, mID) VALUES ' . implode( ', ', $values_array);
$result = mysql_query( $sql);