Possibly simple PHP/MYSQL issue with retrieving and showing data - php

Question

I have been racking my brains over this for a while now. Here is the data I have in the SQL data base as an example:
ID | TYPE | DATA
1 | TXT | TEST
2 | PHP | php
3 | JS | JAVASCRIPT
That is just an example, there are multiple listing for TXT, PHP and JS throughout the table. What I want to do is retrive all the data and display it all into separate drop down/select boxes. Meaning, select box one would list all data with type TXT, select box two would list all data with type PHP and select box 3 would list all data with type JS. The only way I have came about doing this is doing individual sql queries for each different type. I know there is a way to do it all in 1 query and then display it the way I want to but I just can't seem to figure out how and I know its going to drive me nuts when someone helps and I see just how they did it.

Answer 1

The only way that I know of to get all of the data in one query is just to do a generic SELECT * FROM tbl, and then you can group them in the code:
$res = mysqli_query('SELECT * FROM tbl');
$data = array();
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($res)) {
$type = $row['type'];
$data[$type][] = $row;
}
// $data contains all of the record, grouped by the TYPE column
foreach($data as $type => $records) {
echo "records for $type: <select>";
foreach($records as $record) {
echo "<option value='$id'>$id</option>";
}
echo "</select>";
}

Answer 2

Just retrieve all records and loop through them using PHP. Use an iterator if the recordset is going to be huge to prevent using too much memory.
$lists = array();
foreach($recordset as $record) {
$lists[$record['type']][$record['id']] = $record['data'];
}
Know you have an array containing all data.

Answer 3

Just order it by Type and make a loop using "foreach" into the results, changing of select box when the type is different than the preivous.
In this way you only loop once over the array.

Answer 4

You can do kind of grouping with "ORDER BY TYPE":
SELECT id, data
FROM table
ORDER BY type;
Then, in data output loop you can track current type, and build another select box once type changed:
$currentType = "no type";
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($res)) {
if ($currentType != $row['type']) {
$currentType = $row['type'];
// start new select box here
}
// do some other work here
}
BTW, such approach looks like kind of hack :)