Problem populating a select box

[Anon]

I am populating a select box with results from a db query. In this instance, I am populating it with last names. A last name may appear in the db more than once. How can I eliminate the duplicates?

TIA,

Chester
[e-mail]

[Anon]

To me, the easiest solution is to dump the last names into an array and sort it. [There are sort algorithms in the Code Snippet area of this site.] You could either modify the sort to ignore duplicates, or just not copy any item to the select box that equals the previous item.

Hope this helps!

[Anon]

If there are duplicate lastnames in the select there must be duplicate names in the database.. The best solution might be making a better databse structure where duplicate names won't occure.

You could also write a function that checks if you have already entered that name into the select

while($thearray = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
$curname = $thearray[lastname];
if(!$written[$curname])
{
$written[$curname] = 1;
//output select
}
}

Andreas Bernhardsen
Graficonn

[Anon]

Y'know, it occurred to me that there's no point in sorting the list yourself. Add an Order By clause to the select statement that retrieves the names.

Or, if the last name retrieval is all that this select is doing, why can't you Select Distinct?

[Anon]

This solved it perfectly.

Thanks to both Sterling and Andreas for the help.

[Anon]

Duhhh!!!! I am not on top of my SQL game today. I kept thinking UNIQUE was what I wanted and it didn't work...

You may slap me now.