mysql id field just submitted - php

Ok, I find myself doing this often. I'll attach ids to my tables and I'll "link" the tables together. Just a simple example, a team roster might have categories. Each category has an id. When I add players into the roster, I'll assign them a category id as well to signify that they are part of that category.
My question is, for this example, say I'm creating a category and a player at the same. I submit the category but now I have to get the category id to assign it to the player table row. Any suggestions on how to do this efficiently? Currently I would query the database again, and search for specific data related to the category, which doesn't seem very effective.
Note also, the id's Im using are generated by mysql.
Any suggestions would be helpful!

Check out mysql_insert_id()

Related

Create A List From a Category Section in mysql

I was wondering if mysql has a way to look at a column and only retrieve the results when it finds a unique column once. For example
if the table looks like this:
id name category
1 test Health
2 carl Health
3 bob Oscar
4 joe Technology
As you can see their are two rows that could have the same category. Is their a way to retrieve the result where the array will one only return the category once?
What I am trying to do is get all the categories in the database so I can loop through them later in the code and use them. For example if I wanted to created a menu, I would want the menu to list all the categories in the menu.
I know I can run
SELECT categories FROM dbname
but this returns duplicate rows where I only need the cateogry to return once. Is there a way to do this on the mysql side?
I assume I can just use php's array_unique();
but I feel like this adds more overhead, is this not something MYSQL can do on the backend?
group by worked perfectly #Fred-ii- please submit this as answer so I can get that approved for you. – DEVPROCB
As requested by the OP:
You can use GROUP BY col_of_choice in order to avoid duplicates be shown in the queried results.
Reference:
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/group-by-handling.html
By using database normalization, you would create another table with an unique id and the category name and by that link those two together, like
select * from mytable1
on mytable1.cat = mytable2.id
group by mytable1.cat
You can ofcourse also use group by without multiple tables, but for the structure, I recommend doing it.
You can use select distinct:
SELECT DISTINCT categories
FROM dbname ;
For various reasons, it is a good idea to have a separate reference table with one row per category. This helps in many ways:
Ensures that the category names are consistent ("Technology" versus "tech" for instance).
Gives a nice list of categories that are available.
Ensures that a category sticks around, even if no names currently reference it.
Allows for additional information about categories, such as the first time it appears, or a longer description.
This is recommended. However, if you still want to leave the category in place as it is, I would recommend an index on dbname(categories). The query should take advantage of the index.
SELECT id, name from dbname GROUP BY categoryname
Hope this will help.
You can even use distinct category.

MYSQL table suggestions

I am new to MySQL and PHP. I am having issues wrapping my mind around how to accomplish something. I am building a site that has basically a forum style post page. Users enter text into a textarea which then posts that text along with a timestamp and $_SESSION['Username'] into a MySQL table titled "campaigns." So the table has postEntry, postName and postDate rows currently.
On this same page that I have the form, I then display the entire contents of the campaigns table into a div. So it can show each post in descending order.
This has been working great for me, but I am now trying to look at the bigger picture and am thinking this is not a good way to do what I need. I basically need the ability to have an endless amount of "campaigns" each with their own set of posts. Then give the user the ability to select which campaign they want to view and show corresponding posts for that campaign in the div.
So the real question is: Is there a way to do this with just one table. Or would each campaign need it's own table in the database?
Add a campaign_id to the POST table and viola!
edit: more info:
you need one table for the campaign like so:
Campaign
-------------
campaign_id
name
then you need another one for all the posts
post
-------------
post_id
campaign_id
post_time
name
this way, each post is associated to a specific named campaign.

multi category in page PHP MYSQL

i have problem with multi category for page in php and mysql,
i have "Business" , "Category" and "Business_con_Category" tables in mysql.
the Business_con_Category table is connect between Business to Category,
so i think doing select multiple, and implode for add to table.
but my problem is editing how i can know if remove category and delete from table ?
i treid in to array old category and new category and compare, but is not work good..
do you have an idea
thanks!
An easy solution is to not try to remove only some rows from business_con_category. Instead, remove all rows for the given business, and then add the rows with the categories that still should be present.

Optimal database structure for entries in flexible category/subcategory system?

I want to store reviews in a flexible system of categories and subcategories, and am currently in the process of designing the database structure for that. I have an idea how to do that, but I'm not entirely sure if it couldn't be done more elegant and/or efficient. These are my thoughts - if anybody can comment on if/how this can be improved I'd be really grateful.
(To keep this post concise, I only list the important field for the tables)
1.) The reviews are stored in the table "reviews". It has the following fields:
id: uniquite ID, auto-incrementing.
title: the title that will show up in <head><title>, etc.
stub: a version of the title without spaces, special chars, etc. so it can be part of the URL/URI
text: the actual content
2.) All categories are in the same table "categories"
id: unique ID, auto-incrementing.
title: the full title/name of the categorie how it will be output on the website
stub: version of the title that will be shown in the URL/URI.
parent_id: if this is a subcategory, here is the categories.id of the parent category. Else this is 0.
order_number: simple number to order the categories by (for display in the navigation menu)
3.) Now I need an indicator which reviews are in what categories. The can be in multiple. My first idea was to add a "review_list" field to the categories and have it contain all reviews.id's that should be in this category. However I think that adding and removing reviews from categories would be a hassle and "unelegant". So my current idea is to have a table "review_in_category" and have an entry for every review-category relation. The structure is:
id: Unique ID, auto-increment.
review_id: the reviews.id
category_id: the categories.id
So if a review is in 3 different categories it would result in 3 entries in the "review_in_category" table.
The idea is, that when a user opens www.mydomain.de/animation/sci-fi/ the wrapper script will break up the URL into its parts. If it finds more than one category with category.stub = "sci-fi", it will check which of those has a parent category with the stub "animation". Once the correct category is identified (most the time the stubs are unique anyway so this check can be skipped) I want to SELECT all review_id's from "review_in_category" where the category_id matches the the one determined by the wrapper script. All the review_id's are put into an array. A loop will iterate through this array and compose the SELECT statement for listing all review titles (and create links to them using the stub values) by "SELECT title, stub FROM reviews WHERE id=review_list[$counter]" and then add "OR id=review_list[$counter]" until the array is completely travelled.
SO my questions are:
- Is the method my creating a single SELECT statement with potentially a large number of "OR id=" parts an "elegent" and/or efficient way to handle this situation or are there better variants?
- Does using a "taxonomy"-style table (review_in_category) make sense or would it be better to store the "membership"/"relation" directly in the reviews or category tables?
- Any other thoughts... I just started to learn this stuff and appreciate any feedback.
Thank you
Your design looks sound.
To retrieve all reviews in a category, you should use a join:
SELECT reviews.title, reviews.stub FROM reviews, review_in_category WHERE reviews.id = review_in_category.review_id AND category_id = $category

How to display records from SQL through menu, using PHP?

i have made a static drop-down menu for my e-commerce website. i have various categories and then sub categories.
my main tabs are, "CLOTHES", "FOOTWEAR", "ACCESSORIES" etc.
The clothes tab is divided into two parts one is brand wise and one is type(shirts, jeans, etc.)
Now my question is, if i go to the clothes tab and then click on shirts, how can i traverse and retrieve the records from my SQL table.
I have made the connection with the database, my table name is 'products'. The page to display products is list.php.
I am new to PHP and i know a little bit about this language.
have a pages table and categories table
also have cat_parent in the categories table
Then have a php loop to go through each topmost categories and then subcats and ......... and then pages.
watch it in action this is the site i am working a the moment
First you should have categories & sub categories in single 'categories' DB table.
In products table, you will have a category_id column as foreign key.
So based on this category_id column, you can retrieve products from your DB.
Also each product in DB should have assigned a particular category.
You have to use AJAX or a Javascript function to achieve this type of functionality. Here is how:
Use an onChange event in your static drop down menu HTML code.
Make a function in a <script> tag to catch the id of selected item.
Pass this id to the PHP file in the URL.
Give your <div> id name in this Javascript code.
After calling the PHP file catch the id from get method and pass it to the query.
You can get the desired result.

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