Wanting to use one MySQL table to affect multiple pages - php

Question

So right now, I've got a "gallery" system on my homepage of my site. Take a look:
<?php
$objConnect = mysql_connect("mydb.db","hello","mypass") or die(mysql_error());
$objDB = mysql_select_db("mydb");
$pic2 = "SELECT * FROM gallery";
if (!isset($_GET['Page'])) $_GET['Page']='0';
$pic1 = mysql_query($pic2);
$Num_Rows = mysql_num_rows($pic1);
$Per_Page = 16; // Per Page
$Page = $_GET["Page"];
if(!$_GET["Page"])
{$Page=1;}
$Prev_Page = $Page-1;
$Next_Page = $Page+1;
$Page_Start = (($Per_Page*$Page)-$Per_Page);
if($Num_Rows<=$Per_Page)
{$Num_Pages =1;}
else if(($Num_Rows % $Per_Page)==0)
{$Num_Pages =($Num_Rows/$Per_Page) ;}
else
{$Num_Pages =($Num_Rows/$Per_Page)+1;
$Num_Pages = (int)$Num_Pages;}
$pic2 .=" order by GalleryID ASC LIMIT $Page_Start , $Per_Page";
$pic1 = mysql_query($pic2);
$cell = 0;
$link2 = "SELECT * FROM gallery";
$link1 = mysql_query($link2);
$link = mysql_fetch_array($link1);
$alt2 = "SELECT * FROM gallery";
$alt1 = mysql_query($alt2);
$alt = mysql_fetch_array($alt1);
echo '<div id="tablediv"><table border="0" cellpadding="17" cellspacing="0" class="table"><tr>';
while($pic = mysql_fetch_array($pic1))
{if($cell % 4 == 0) {
echo '</tr><tr>';}
if($cell == 2) {
echo '<td>reserved cell, ignore this</td>';
} elseif ($cell == 3) {
echo '<td>reserved cell, ignore this</td>';
} else {
echo '
<td><div class="image"><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images/' . $pic["pic"] . '" alt="' . $alt["alt"] . ' /></div></td>'; }
$cell++;
}
echo '</tr></table></div>';
?>
Anyhow... as you can see, with this system, whenever I insert a new record, it automatically updates my gallery. Now my question is how can I make it so when I insert a new record, it doesn't just affect my homepage gallery, it affects the galleries on the other subsections of my website as well.
Say my site is called site.com . I also have a site.com/nature . My site.com/nature is only for nature photos, but I don't want to manually update /nature by creating a whole new set of table and update that manually. Rather I'd rather take an easier route, so in my gallery table, I can specify whether or not I want it in /nature.
I presume I would need another column (obviously) for specifying what other folders do I want my record to appear in, or maybe some conditional statements to determine which subfolder should my record also appear in and not just my homepage. Unfortunately, I'm a nooblet, so I'm asking if fellow stackers can help me with this. Thanks!

Answer 1

I'm not sure of the exact schema you're using but if your gallery is sub divided into categories like nature, animation. its best to have one extra column ("category") probably a varchar or string (sorry not familiar with exact types in mysql) that specifies the category, so in the nature category you would go like:
select *
from gallery g
where g.category = 'nature'
So if you have another category like pokemon you would go:
select *
from gallery g
where g.category = 'pokemon'
This way you can have many different categories for you site.
but in the main page where you want all the pictures just have:
select *
from gallery g
Also, its best that instead of returning * you return only the fields you actually need. And possible use select DISTINCT filndName so you're not getting repeats the same tuple (entry) when grabbing it from sql

Answer 2

There are a couple of different ways you can go about this. Since you don't want to create another table, one way you can approach it is to use a column of the SET data type. This would allow you to create a set of all the subsections you have (up to 64) with one gallery item being possibly in multiple subsections.
The possible problems are the limit of 64 subsections, of course, and the fact that adding a new subsection requires an ALTER statement which, depending on how you go about adding a subsection, could cause permission issues among other things.
In my opinion, a better way is to add two new tables. One table will be a subsection table which only needs an id and a subsection path ('nature'). The other table will be a gallery-subsection table that has the gallery id and subsection id so that one gallery item can be in multiple subsections. This is not only easier to add a new subsection, but it also allows for many more than 64 subsections.