Multiple Queries: Multi Variables or One Query - php

Question

I had a lot of help in writing all of this in php (mainly the first long query).
// Query the database for data
$query = "SELECT cards.card_id, concat(title, \" By Amy\") AS TitleConcat,
description, meta_description,
seo_keywords,concat(\"http://www.amyadele.com/attachments//cards/\",cards.card_id,\"/\",card_image) AS ImageConcat,price
FROM cards, card_cheapest
WHERE cards.card_id = card_cheapest.card_id
ORDER BY card_id";
$result = mysql_query($query);
// Open file for writing
$myFile = "googleproducts.txt";
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'w') or die("can't open file");
// Loop through returned data and write (append) directly to file
fprintf($fh, "%-25s %-200s %-800s %-200s %-800s %-800s\n", "id", "label","description","price","image","seo keywords");
fprintf($fh, "\n");
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
fprintf($fh, "%-25s %-200s %-800s %-200s %-800s %-800s\n", $row['card_id'], $row['TitleConcat'], $row['description'],$row['price'],$row['ImageConcat'], $row['seo_keywords']);
}
// Close out the file
fclose($fh);
echo "The file has been written sucessfully to googleproducts.txt. It will run again tomorrow at 12:00pm."
?>
However, over the last couple of days I have written a couple other queries which leads me to my question. Would it be easier to somehow stick this other queries into the first "select", or would it be easier to set up multiple queries and then just insert that into the rows as well (I dont even know if that is even possible).
Query: Selecting the Min Price
select card_id, min(card_price) from card_lookup_values where card_price > 0 group by card_id;
Query: Creating URL Structure
SELECT CONCAT('http://amyadele.com/', cards.title, '/', categories.seoname, '/', cards.seoname),cards.card_id
FROM cards
LEFT JOIN card_categories
ON card_categories.card_id = cards.card_id
LEFT JOIN categories
ON card_categories.category_id = categories.category_id ORDER by card_id;
I guess my question is is it best to set up my queries (which I already know work) into multiple variables and then somehow push that into the table format I have set up, or to somehow format all of these queries into one long query?
I recently just wrote
SELECT
replace(lower(concat( 'http://www.amyadele.com/', pcat.seoname,'/',cat.seoname, '/', cards.seoname, '.htm' )),' ','+') AS link,
concat(pcat.name,'>',cat.name) as category,
replace(lower(concat( 'http://www.amyadele.com/', cat.seoname, '/', cards.seoname, '.htm' )),' ','+') AS add_to_cart_link
FROM cards
INNER JOIN card_categories cc ON cards.card_id = cc.card_id AND cards.card_live = 'y' AND cards.active = 'y' AND cc.active = 'Y'
INNER JOIN categories cat ON cat.category_id = cc.category_id AND cat.active = 'Y'
INNER JOIN categories pcat ON cat.parent_category_id = pcat.category_id
INNER JOIN card_lookup_values clv on clv.card_id=cards.card_id and clv.lookup_detail_id
WHERE cat.parent_category_id <>0
ORDER BY cc.card_id
However, I am really confused on how to even add this now

Answer 1

You can use 'joins' to aggregate all of this information into a single response from the DB. I don't know your exact schema, so some of this is just a guess, but here is how I would start.
SELECT
cards.card_id,
concat(cards.title, ' By Amy') AS TitleConcat,
cards.description,
cards.meta_description,
cards.seo_keywords,
concat('http://www.amyadele.com/attachments//cards/',cards.card_id,'/',cards.card_image) AS ImageConcat,
card_cheapest.price,
card_import.author,
min(card_lookup_values.card_price)
FROM
cards
join card_cheapest on cards.card_id = card_cheapest.card_id
left join card_import on card_import.card_id = cards.card_id
join card_lookup_values on card_lookup_values.card_id = cards.card_id
WHERE card_lookup_values.card_price > 0
GROUP BY
cards.card_id
ORDER BY
cards.card_id