I'm creating a feed by retrieving information from my database using nested while loops (is there a better way to do this?).
I have one table called users with all the names amongst other things. The other table is called messages which has messages, the user who posted it, and a timestamp.
$userQuery = mysql_query("SELECT name FROM users");
while ($user = mysql_fetch_array($userQuery, MYSQL_NUM)) {
$messageQuery = mysql_query("SELECT message FROM messages WHERE user = $user ORDER BY timestamp DESC");
while ($message = mysql_fetch_array($messageQuery, MYSQL_NUM)) {
echo "$user[0]: $message[0]";
}
}
The problem is that it doesn't order by the timestamp and I can't tell how it's ordered. I've tried timestamp, datetime, and int types with UNIX timestamps.
EDIT: I should add that the user and message matches up fine, it's just the ordering that doesn't work.
I guess you get your users in more or less random order and "within" one user the sorting is ok?!
use:
$result = mysql_query('select users.name,messages.message from messages join users on (users.name=messages.user) order by messages.timestamp');
while($row = mysql_fetch_row($result))
echo "$row[0]: $row[1]";
That should give you an ordered result (at least if you have a column called messages.timestamp. Check the name ;-)). And all in one query...
For the query, you could create a join
SELECT u.name as name, m.message as message
FROM users u inner join messages m
on u.user = m.user
order by
m.timestamp DESC
As for the second part, I don't see anything wrong with your could. May be you could post some samples of your data to see if that is making any difference.
Related
I have several id's in a table called "leaderboards" that belong to different users. They're named as:"id_user" and they're not in order. What I want to do is printing divs in a leaderbord which should contain some info that I get from those id_user's.
The only problem I have about it is that after a research on stackoverflow and other websites, I still couldn't find how to select those id_user's in descending order AND be able to take one by one to get the info from that user and then continue with the next id_user, and so on.
I don't know how to select the specific row of each id_user in descending order to do the other codes that I already know how to do.
I hope it's not a duplicate of any other previosly asked question on this website (I really did a research and I couldn't find any specific answer to this question, for the sql part and the php part all together).
Thank you so so much beforehand.
An INNER JOIN between your tables will achieve what you intend.
SELECT *
FROM users
JOIN leaderboards WHERE users.id = leaderboards.id_user
ORDER BY users.id DESC
In each returned row, you will get the columns from both your users and leaderboards tables, so loop over the result and echo the information from the user you need.
$query = 'SELECT...';
$res = mysqli_query($query);
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($res)) {
echo '<div>'.$row['id'].' - '.$row['username'].' - '.$row['image'].'</div>';
}
You could do with a good read up on both PHP and MySql but I'll give you a clue.
EDIT
$query = "SELECT * FROM `the_name_of_your_table` ORDER BY `user_id` DESC;";
if ($result = mysqli_query($link, $query)) {
/* fetch associative array */
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
print $row["user_id"] . " - " . $row["username"] . "<BR>";
}
/* free result set */
mysqli_free_result($result);
}
I am building a mysql based chat application.
My database schema has the following tables,
Users Messages
================= =================
id id
screen_name message
from
to
timestamp
The from and to fields on the messages table contain the id's of the users that sent and received each message.
I am trying to display all messages between a user ($id) and one of their friends ($friend). My query is the following:
$query = "SELECT messages.* , users.screen_name FROM users CROSS JOIN messages ";
$query .= "ON ( messages.to = $id AND messages.from = $friend ) ";
$query .= "OR ( messages.to = $friend AND messages.from = $id )";
The problem is that every message is twice in the result table.
I tried using DISTINCT but it either doesn't work in this scenario or I used it wrong.
What should my query be in order to have each message between the two users only once?
Something like this should do the trick:
SELECT
messages.*,
users_from.screen_name AS from_screen_name,
users_to.screen_name AS to_screen_name
FROM
messages
JOIN users AS users_from ON messages.from = users_from.id
JOIN users AS users_to ON messages.to = users_to.id
WHERE
(messages.to = $id AND messages.from = $friend)
OR ( messages.to = $friend AND messages.from = $id)
What this does is joing the "users" table twice, once on the "to" column and the second time on the "from" column.
#Travesty3 has already suggested that the DISTINCT keyword will only exclude duplicate rows where all fields are equal to another row. Therefore, the DISTINCT keyword is not the way to go here.
What you can do, however, is to simply GROUP BY messages.id in order to get only one row per message ID (there is no guarantee, however, as to which of the two rows will be excluded).
I'm trying to generate a list of events that a user is attending. All I'm trying to do is search through columns and comparing the userid to the names stored in each column using LIKE.
Right now I have two different events stored in my database for testing, each with a unique eventID. The userid i'm signed in with is attending both of these events, however it's only displaying the eventID1 twice instead of eventID1 and eventID2.
The usernames are stored in a column called acceptedInvites separated by "~". So right now it shows "1~2" for the userid's attending. Can I just use %like% to pull these events?
$userid = $_SESSION['userid'];
echo "<h2>My Events</h2>";
$myEvents = mysql_query("select eventID from events where acceptedInvites LIKE '%$userid%' ");
$fetch = mysql_fetch_array($myEvents);
foreach($fetch as $eventsAttending){
echo $eventsAttending['eventID'];
}
My output is just 11 when it should be 12
Change your table setup, into a many-to-many setup (many users can attend one event, and one user can attend many events):
users
- id (pk, ai)
- name
- embarrassing_personal_habits
events
- id (pk, ai)
- location
- start_time
users_to_events
- user_id ]-|
|- Joint pk
- event id ]-|
Now you just use joins:
SELECT u.*
FROM users u
JOIN users_to_events u2e
ON u.id = u2e.id
JOIN events e
ON u2e.event_id = e.id
WHERE u.id = 11
I'm a bit confused by your description, but I think the issue is that mysql_fetch_array just returns one row at a time and your code is currently set up in a way that seems to assume $fetch is filled with an array of all the results. You need to continuously be calling mysql_fetch_array for that to happen.
Instead of
$fetch = mysql_fetch_array($myEvents);
foreach($fetch as $eventsAttending){
echo $eventsAttending['eventID'];
}
You could have
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($myEvents)) {
echo $row['eventID'];
}
This would cycle through the various rows of events in the table.
Instead of using foreach(), use while() like this:
$myEvents = mysql_query("SELECT `eventID` FROM `events` WHERE `acceptedInvites` LIKE '".$userid."'");
while ($fetch = mysql_fetch_array($myEvents))
{
echo $fetch['eventID'];
}
It will create a loop like foreach() but simpler...
P.S. When you make a MySQL Query, use backticks [ ` ] to ensure that the string is not confused with MySQL functions (LIKE,SELECT, etc.).
I have the following 3 tables in the database.
Programs_Table
Program_ID (Primary Key)
Start_Date
End_Date
IsCompleted
IsGoalsMet
Program_type_ID
Programs_Type_Table(different types of programs, supports a dropdown list in the form)
Program_type_ID (Primary Key)
Program_name
Program_description
Client_Program_Table
Client_ID (primary key)
Program_ID (primary key)
What is the best way to find out how many clients are in a specific program (program type)?
Would the following SQL statement be the best way, or even plausible?
SELECT Client_ID FROM Client_Program_Table
INNER JOIN Programs_Table
ON Client_Program_Table.Program_ID = Programs_Table.Program_ID
WHERE Programs_Table.Program_type_ID = "x"
where "x" is the Program_type_ID of the specific program we're interested in.
OR is the following a better way?
$result = mysql_query("SELECT Program_ID FROM Programs_Table
WHERE Program_type_ID = 'x'");
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
$ProgramID = $row['Program_ID'];
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM Client_Program_Table
WHERE Program_ID = '$ProgramID'");
mysql_num_rows($result) // returns how many rows of clients we pulled.
Thank you in advance, please excuse my inexperience and any mistakes that I've made.
Here is how you can do it:
<?php
// always initialize a variable
$number_of_clients = 0;
// escape the string which will go in an SQL query
// to protect yourself from SQL injection
$program_type_id = mysql_real_escape_string('x');
// build a query, which will count how many clients
// belong to that program and put the value on the temporary colum "num_clients"
$query = "SELECT COUNT(*) `num_clients` FROM `Client_Program_Table` `cpt`
INNER JOIN `Programs_Table` `pt`
ON `cpt`.`Program_ID` = `pt`.`Program_ID`
AND `pt`.`Program_type_ID` = '$program_type_id'";
// execute the query
$result = mysql_query($query);
// check if the query executed correctly
// and returned at least a record
if(is_resource($result) && mysql_num_rows($result) > 0){
// turn the query result into an associative array
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
// get the value of the "num_clients" temporary created column
// and typecast it to an intiger so you can always be safe to use it later on
$number_of_clients = (int) $row['num_clients'];
} else{
// query did not return a record, so we have no clients on that program
$number_of_clients = 0;
}
?>
If you want to know how many clients are involved in a program, you'd rather want to use COUNT( * ). MySQL (with MyISAM) and SQL Server have a fast way to retrieve the total number of lines. Using a SELECT(*), then mysql_num_rows leads to unnecessary memory ressources and computing time. To me, this is the fastest, though not the "cleanest" way to write the query you want:
SELECT
COUNT(*)
FROM
Client_Program_Table
WHERE
Program_ID IN
(
SELECT
Program_ID
FROM
Programs_Table
WHERE
Program_type_ID = 'azerty'
)
Why is that?
Using JOIN make queries more readable, but subqueries often prove to be computed faster.
This returns a count of the clients in a specific program type (x):
SELECT COUNT(cpt.Client_ID), cpt.Program_ID
FROM Client_Program_Table cpt
INNER JOIN Programs_Table pt ON cpt.Program_ID=pt.Program_ID
WHERE pt.Program_type_ID = "x"
GROUP BY cpt.Program_ID
Hey guys, I created a list for fixtures.
$result = mysql_query("SELECT date FROM ".TBL_FIXTURES." WHERE compname = '$comp_name' GROUP BY date");
$i = 1;
$d = "Start";
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
{
$odate = $row['date'];
$date=date("F j Y", $row['date']);
echo "<p>Fixture $i - $d to $date</p>";
}
As you can see from the query, the date is displayed from the fixtures table.
The way my system works is that when a fixture is "played", it is removed from this table. Therefore when the entire round of fixtures are complete, there wont be any dates for that round in this table. They will be in another table.
Is there anyway I can run an other query for dates at the same time, and display only dates from the fixtures table if there isnt a date in the results table?
"SELECT * FROM ".TBL_CONF_RESULTS."
WHERE compid = '$_GET[id]' && type2 = '2' ORDER BY date"
That would be the second query!
EDIT FROM HERE ONWARDS...
Is there anyway I can select the date from two tables and then only use one if there are matches. Then use the rows of dates (GROUPED BY) to populate my query? Is that possible?
It sounds like you want to UNION the two result sets, akin to the following:
SELECT f.date FROM tbl_fixtures f
WHERE f.compname = '$comp_name'
UNION SELECT r.date FROM tbl_conf_results r
WHERE r.compid = '$_GET[id]' AND r.type2 = '2'
GROUP BY date
This should select f.date and add rows from r.date that aren't already in the result set (at least this is the behaviour with T-SQL). Apparently it may not scale well, but there are many blogs on that (search: UNION T-SQL).
From the notes on this page:
//performs the query
$result = mysql_query(...);
$num_rows = mysql_num_rows($result);
//if query result is empty, returns NULL, otherwise,
//returns an array containing the selected fields and their values
if($num_rows == NULL)
{
// Do the other query
}
else
{
// Do your stuff as now
}
WHERE compid = '$_GET[id]' presents an oportunity for SQL Injection.
Are TBL_FIXTURES and TBL_CONF_RESULTS supposed to read $TBL_FIXTURES and $TBL_CONF_RESULTS?
ChrisF has the solution!
One other thing you might think about is whether it is necessary to do a delete and move to another table. A common way to solve this type of challenge is to include a status field for each record, then rather than just querying for "all" you query for all where status = "x". For example, 1 might be "staging", 2 might be "in use", 3 might be "used" or "archived" In your example, rather than deleting the field and "moving" the record to another table (which would also have to happen in the foreach loop, one would assume) you could simply update the status field to the next status.
So, you'd eliminate the need for an additional table, remove one additional database hit per record, and theoretically improve the performance of your application.
Seems like what you want is a UNION query.
$q1 = "SELECT DISTINCT date FROM ".TBL_FIXTURES." WHERE compname = '$comp_name'";
$q2 = "SELECT DISTINCT date FROM ".TBL_CONF_RESULTS.
"WHERE compid = '$_GET[id]' && type2 = '2'";
$q = "($q1) UNION DISTINCT ($q2) ORDER BY date";