mysql fastest 2 table query - php

Question

Situation: 2 tables, the first (Persons) storing person names and some other data, and the second (Phones) storing their phone numbers. There can be multiple phone numbers per person (thats why I am using separate tables in the first place).
Goal: Select everything so that in the end I'd have a php array like this:
array
(
'0' => array
(
'name' => 'John Smith'
// other values from table Persons...
'Phones' => array('0' => '12345', '1' => '324343') // from Phones table
),
'1' => array
(
'name' => 'Adam Smith'
// other values from table Persons...
'Phones' => array('0' => '645646', '1' => '304957389', '2' => '9435798') // from Phones table
)
);
ETC.
Phones.person_id = Persons.id
What would be the fastest way to do this? Fastest in a sense of program execution time, not the coding time. I could do simple JOIN but in this case I'd get many duplicate rows, i.e. for each phone I get all the data of the same person again and again in each row if you see what I mean. So I need to work on the array in PHP side. Maybe there's a better way?

Answer 1

One query. Check for typos:
$return = array();
$query = "SELECT pe.id, pe.name, ph.phone FROM Persons pe INNER JOIN phones ph ON pe.id = ph.person_id ";
$results = mysql_query($query);
if($results && mysql_num_rows($results)) {
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($results)) {
if(!$return[$row['id']]) {
$return[$row['id']] = array('name' => $row['name'], 'Phones' => array());
}
array_push($return[$row['id']]['Phones'], $row['phone']);
}
}
return $return;

Answer 2

Get the person first, and then query for each of the phone numbers.
$return = array();
$query = "SELECT `id`, `name` FROM `Persons`";
$person_results = mysql_query($query);
if($person_results && mysql_num_rows($person_results)) {
while($person_row = mysql_fetch_assoc($person_results)) {
$person = array();
$person['name'] = $person_row['name'];
$person['phone'] = array();
$query = "SELECT `number` FROM `Phones` WHERE `person_id` = '{$person_row['id']}'";
$phone_results = mysql_query($query);
if($phone_results && mysql_num_rows($phone_results)) {
while($phone_row = mysql_fetch_assoc($phone_results)) {
array_push($person['phone'], $phone_row['number']);
}
}
}
}
return $return;