SQL or PHP?

Question

Hello.
I'm looking at Foundation PHP for Dreamweaver 8, by David
Powers, and if anybody is familiar with the book, maybe they can
help answer my question. Using Dave's random quotations tables
authors, quotations in chapter 8: if I wanted to display every
quote by each author, listing the author only once, how would I do
that?
authors table:
Field Type Null
author_id int(10) No
first_name varchar(30) No
family_name varchar(30) No
PRIMARY author_id
quotations table:
Field Type Null
quote_id int(10) No
author_id int(10) Yes
quotation varchar(255) No
PRIMARY quote_id
Currently, to get every quote by each author, the query
reads:
SELECT quotations. quotation, authors.first _name,
authors.family_name
FROM quotations, authors
WHERE quotations.author_id = author.author_id
But that produces a result listing each authors name for each
quote. I want to list the authors name only once, and then display
the list of quotes associated with each author.
Is that done in the SQL query, or is it done afterward, using
PHP?
Thank you so much for your help!!!

Answer 1

Use a variable for the author's name. Initialize it by
setting it to a null
string.
Each pass through your echo loop will test this variable
against the actual
name as pulled from the database. If they are different, set
the variable
to the actual name and then print the variable.
Does that make sense?
Murray --- ICQ 71997575
Adobe Community Expert
(If you *MUST* email me, don't LAUGH when you do so!)
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"Anhialator" <[email protected]> wrote in
message
news:ekspha$t4r$[email protected]..
> Hello.
> I'm looking at Foundation PHP for Dreamweaver 8, by
David Powers, and if
> anybody is familiar with the book, maybe they can help
answer my question.
> Using Dave's random quotations tables authors,
quotations in chapter 8:
> if I
> wanted to display every quote by each author, listing
the author only
> once, how
> would I do that?
>
> authors table:
> Field Type Null
> author_id int(10) No
> first_name varchar(30) No
> family_name varchar(30) No
> PRIMARY author_id
>
> quotations table:
> Field Type Null
> quote_id int(10) No
> author_id int(10) Yes
> quotation varchar(255) No
> PRIMARY quote_id
>
> Currently, to get every quote by each author, the query
reads:
>
> SELECT quotations. quotation, authors.first _name,
authors.family_name
> FROM quotations, authors
> WHERE quotations.author_id = author.author_id
>
> But that produces a result listing each authors name for
each quote. I
> want
> to list the authors name only once, and then display the
list of quotes
> associated with each author.
>
> Is that done in the SQL query, or is it done afterward,
using PHP?
>
> Thank you so much for your help!!!
>
>