[mdhall]

I'm helping a friend set up a result query, and want the results displayed a certain way. There is a table which contains manufactures and their products. Each entry/row has id, mfg, longproductname, shortname, etc. As it is, this query (intentionally) only brings up the manufacturer name and product name. The product name will link to another query page (passing the row "id" through an anchor tag) which brings up the entire row of that product. Fine, no problems there.
Where I'm stuck is on the first query. Currently, the query brings up id, mfg, and shortname, and displays as such...

Manufacturer "A" product 1
Manufacturer "A" product 2
Manufacturer "A" product 3
Manufacturer "B" product 1
Manufacturer "B" product 2

Ideally, we want the display this way...

Manufacturer "A"
product 1
product 2
product 3

Manufacturer "B"
product 1
product 2

etc., etc.

I cant figure out how to display the mfg name once, then loop thru and list all of the products for that mfg, then list the next mfg name, then their products, and so on. Would each manufacturer need to have their own table to do this, or is there a way with the current set up?

[wheezy360]

I'm not sure about the scope of your project here but it might be more beneficial to store the manufacturer's info in one table, and the products in another table and give the product table a field called mfg_id which is a foreign key to the manufacturer's table.. From then you could have two queries:

PHP Code:

<?

/* include your db connection crap */



$sql = "SELECT * FROM manufacturers";

$mfg_result = @mysql_query($sql, $connection) or die("Couldn't execute query: " .mysql_error());

while($mfg = mysql_fetch_array($mfg_result)){

   echo $mfg['name'];

   $sql = "SELECT * FROM products WHERE mfg_id=\"" . $mfg['id'] . "\"";

   $product_result = @mysql_query($sql, $connection) or die("Couldn't execute query: " . mysql_error());

   while($product = mysql_fetch_array($product_result)){

      echo $product['name'];

   }

}

?>

?>

[mdhall]

OK. thnx, I'll see what she wants to do as far as changing table data and so forth. I knew it needed some type of double query but couldnt quite nail it down.

[Stefan]

you might want to look into the use of mysql_data_seek() to make the script slightly more efficient. that way, you can get all your data with one query, and run through the results twice

[mdhall]

I did some searcing on this, but didn't really find an example of how to set it up for my needs. Someone suggested using this...

select all from mfg
foreach mfg record
print mfg record
select all from items where mfg_mfgid = item_mfgid
foreach item record
print item record
endforeach
endforeach

But I havent found any examples of setting this up either.