Very confusing mySQL array

alexgeek · #1 Oct 7th, 2007, 02:19

i'm pulling everything from my blog entries table:
Select * from blog_entries;

this has 6 columns:
id
entry
title
timestamp
rating
cat (category)

How would I go about doing this:
<div class="blogentry">
<strong>Title from mysql</strong> - <span class="date">DATE</span>
<span class="category">Category</span>
<p>a bit of the entry, cut off after a while</p>
<div class="rating">
rating
</div>
</div>

for each row?
it confuses me, i don't know how many arrays are in each array and stuff like that.

Help appreciated, sorry if I didn't explain this properly.

Rakuli · #2 Oct 7th, 2007, 03:23

Hi Alex,

The preferred way is to loop through the results of the query with a while loop.

eg.

PHP: Select all




$results = mysql_query ($query) or die (mysql_error() . '<br />Ouch!!');



// check there were *SOME* results



if (mysql_num_rows($results))

{

    // loop through the array

    

    while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($results)) // Will fetch an associative array with the column names as the keys

        

    echo '<div class="blogentry">

        <strong>', $row['title'], '</strong> - <span class="date">', strftime('%d %b %Y', $row['date']), '</span>

        <span class="category">', $row['cat'], '</span>

        <p>', substr($row['entry'], 0, 100), '.....</p>', // change 100 to be how many characters you want

        '<div class="rating">',

            $row['rating'],

        '</div>

        </div>';

} else

    echo '<strong>No Results returned! Oh the agony!</strong>';

alexgeek · #3 Oct 7th, 2007, 16:12

unexpected string with the while loop unfortunately. I don't know why though :/

alexgeek · #4 Oct 7th, 2007, 16:15

Woops, it works great thanks

notepad messed up some of the asciis for something. Thanks Rakuli yet again!

alexgeek · #5 Oct 7th, 2007, 16:21

Could you explain the while statement please? I really don't get it.. and why doesn't the while loop have curly braces? This really confuses me. thanks

Rakuli · #6 Oct 8th, 2007, 08:25

No probs.

The mysql_fetch_array/row/array functions keep track of the last array index that was retrieved. This means that each time you call the function you get the next index of the array until there are none remaining when it will return false.

Using this in a while loop means that when the statement evaluates to false (when no results remain) the conditional fails and the loop breaks.

The reason why there are no curly braces is because there is only one statement in the loop. Curly braces aren't required for conditionals and loops unless you need to execute multiple statements.

Cheers,

alexgeek · #7 Oct 8th, 2007, 12:30

Oh thanks

How can I just loop through a certain number then?
or have 10 entries per page?

Rakuli · #8 Oct 8th, 2007, 12:38

To loop through a certain number, the best thing would be to use a for loop

PHP: Select all




// max results to output

$max = 10;



for ($i=0; $i < $max; $i++)

    echo 'random txt is fun to right'; // So on....

Pagination takes a somewhat more complex approach.

alexgeek · #9 Oct 8th, 2007, 17:19

Thanks Rakuli, I shall try to explain more though. (Sorry to ask so much).
how would I do it with the following:
archives.php?s=1&e=10
archives.php?s=11&e=20

so, the first would show blogs 1 - 10 and the second would show 11 - 20 so on so forth?

Rakuli · #10 Oct 8th, 2007, 17:27

Hi alex,

Have a look at the code I wrote in This thread about paginationp

It has an example of what you want to do.

alexgeek · #11 Oct 8th, 2007, 17:29

Thanks Rakuli.

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Very confusing mySQL array