MySQL & PHP quick question....

StickyMcGinty · 09-03-2007 06:18PM #1

Hey Lads,

I'm getting a result back from the DB using

$result = mysql_query($search);

what i'm asking is if there is any way to search through the rows of results you get from this query so that i can sort them...

i want to put them into a table with a colour coded background. i can do that no probs, but i want to have results of the same type in order

e.g. say these are the result rows i get from the query

id    -   name    -     position

1    -    john     -     Manager
2    -   michael  -     Supervisor
3    -   sean     -     Clerk
4    -   shane    -     Manager
5    -   fred      -      Supervisor
6    -   Steve   -      Manager

can i search the rows to display the managers first, colour code them in a table, then display the clerks, colour code them and then the supervisors and colour code them?

Unfortunately i cant use ORDER BY in the query as they are strings not in alphabetical order.

Can anyone help me out?

Seth Brundle · 09-03-2007 06:27PM

Can you add another field to the table containing a number 1,2 or 3 depending on their role and sort that way - shouldn't take long?

StickyMcGinty · 09-03-2007 07:24PM

yea trying to find a workaround like that alright, cheers

nobodythere · 09-03-2007 07:30PM

What you could do is do three seperate queries and print it out accordingly.

The slightly more complex way would be like so (this code prob has a million errors):

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * from dbname ORDER BY position;");

while($row=mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
  if($row['position'] == 'Manager')
  {
     ...code for this bit
  }
  else if($row['position'] == 'Supervisor')
  {
     ...code for this bit
  }
  else if($row['position'] == 'blahblahblah')
  {
     ...code for this bit
  }
}

StickyMcGinty · 09-03-2007 11:17PM

i ended up sending the query off 3 times and passing it through a function to colour code it, thanks for the help anyway lads!

MySQL & PHP quick question....

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