|
|
Posted by Colin Fine on 10/03/06 08:11
Andy Hassall wrote:
> On Mon, 02 Oct 2006 20:07:47 GMT, "mantrid" <ian.dandav@virgin.net> wrote:
>
>> I have records from a database that are extracted with php and displayed in
>> a table.
>> Data in some of the fields is replicated
>>
>> eg
>> something1,item1,somethingelse1
>> something1,item1,somethingelse2
>> something1,item2,somethingelse3
>> something1,item2,somethingelse4
>> something2,item1,somethingelse5
>> something2,item1,somethingelse6
>> something2,item2,somethingelse7
>> something2,item2,somethingelse8
>>
>> i wish to tidy this up and make it more readable by putting repeated fields
>> as a header row or something along those lines
>> eg
>>
>> something1
>> item1
>> somethingelse1
>> somethingelse2
>> item2
>> somethingelse3
>> somethingelse4
>>
>> something2
>> item1
>> somethingelse5
>> somethingelse6
>> item2
>> somethingelse7
>> somethingelse8
>>
>> I think I can do it using about 3 sql statements two of which use grouping,
>> but I would like to know if there is a more elegant solution using the one
>> sql and somehow doing the grouping in the php.
>
> For each field that you're grouping by in your display, keep a variable for
> the last seen value. When it changes, print a header row, and reset the
> variable. So for example here, you'd have two variables keeping track of the
> "somethingX" and "itemX" fields.
>
> When you see a change in the first-level heading also reset the second-level
> variable (to empty string or something that won't appear in the data itself),
> so you get a heading row for "something2/item1".
>
> Your SQL and data remains unchanged, it's just a matter of how you display it.
>
I would prefer to use associative arrays and array_key_exists. Something
like:
$root = array();
while ($record = /*retrieve a record from DB */) {
$fields = /*fn. to split record into an array of fields*/;
$current = &$root;
foreach ($fields as $field) {
if (!array_key_exists($field, $current) {
$current[$field] = array();
}
$current = &$current[$field];
}
}
This now has your entire data in a hierarchical array structure, and
it works however many fields there are in a record. (The last level
will be empty arrays, but that shouldn't be a problem).
Colin
Navigation:
[Reply to this message]
|