Style, technique, and best practices question

Question

I have a database containing a number of products (say 1000).
These
products are categorized into 5 different categories.
I want to deal with these products in ways that lead me to
wonder the
following -
1. Is it better to have multiple recordsets (one for each
category), or to
have a single recordset loaded into an array which can then
be manipulated
on the page, e.g.,
$blah = array();
do {
$blah[] = $row_recordset;
} while ($row_recordset = mysql_fetch_assoc($rsrecordset));
2. Also, at present I have this method implemented like this
<?php
$tester = array();
$socketTester = array();
$adapter = array();
$accessory = array();
do {
if (($row_rsTesters['ItemCatID']) == 4) { $tester[] =
$row_rsTesters; }
if (($row_rsTesters['ItemCatID']) == 6) { $socketTester[] =
$row_rsTesters; }
if (($row_rsTesters['ItemCatID']) == 2) { $accessory[] =
$row_rsTesters; }
if (($row_rsTesters['ItemCatID']) == 3) { $adapter[] =
$row_rsTesters; }
} while ($row_rsTesters = mysql_fetch_assoc($rsTesters));
?>
Could I do it with a single array key, instead of multiple
arrays?
<?php
$products = array();
do {
if (($row_rsTesters['ItemCatID']) == 4) { $products['tester']
=
$row_rsTesters; }
elseif (($row_rsTesters['ItemCatID']) == 6) {
$products['socketTester'] =
$row_rsTesters; }
elseif (($row_rsTesters['ItemCatID']) == 2) {
$products['accessory'] =
$row_rsTesters; }
elseif (($row_rsTesters['ItemCatID']) == 3) {
$products['adapter'] =
$row_rsTesters; }
} while ($row_rsTesters = mysql_fetch_assoc($rsTesters));
Murray --- ICQ 71997575
Adobe Community Expert
(If you *MUST* email me, don't LAUGH when you do so!)
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Answer 1

On Wed, 12 Dec 2007 10:15:55 -0500, "Murray *ACE*"
<[email protected]> wrote:
>I want to deal with these products in ways that lead me
to wonder the
>following -
>
>1. Is it better to have multiple recordsets (one for each
category), or to
>have a single recordset loaded into an array which can
then be manipulated
>on the page, e.g.,
Manipulated? What is it you want to achieve? Generally, I'd
say a single
query, resulting in a single recordset, would be more
efficient than
several queries to the database, but how you'd do it would
depend on
your goal.
Gary