PHP+MySQL result+E-mail...

[Anon]

Hello I am working on an open source Alumni script. I have run into a snag that maybe someone can help me with.

I have a database table setup with different fields such as First_Name, Middle_Name, Last_Name, Email, etc. When the person registers with the Alumni, he/she enters only the information they want (first and last name, however, are required). When a person visits the Alumni site they see a listing of all the people in the database ordered by lastname.

In order to print the page I query the database and retrieve all the information using mysql_fetch_array() in a while loop. What I would like to happen is that if the person entered an e-mail address, when they first registered, that their name be turned into a mailto link.

Currently I use a if(isset($email)) to make the mailto, where $email is the data stored in the Email column in the database. The problem is that every single name becomes a link, even if they did not enter a e-mail address. For the ones that did not enter an e-mail address the mailto link is blank (e.g <a href="mailto:">John Doe</a>).

Is there a way to display only the information entered for each person and nothing else? So that a person named Bill, who entered an e-mail address, can have his name become a mailto link and a person name John, who did not enter an e-mail address, have his name just displayed (no link)?

Thank you in advance. Please excuse the length of the post, I wanted to make myself clear, since it's quite a confusing problem.

[Anon]

Of course there is, but what does your code look like? This is a basic flow-control problem.

if (isset($email))
echo "<a href=\"mailto:$email\">$firstname $lastname</a>";
else
echo "$firstname $lastname";

[Anon]

That's pretty much what the code looks likes. This is a simplified version of the troubling code:

$query= mysql_query("SELECT * FROM Alumni ORDER BY Last_Name");
while ($row= mysql_fetch_array($query))
{
$firstname= $row["First_Name"];
$lastname= $row["Last_Name"];
$email= $row["Email"];

if (isset($email))
{
echo "<a href=\"mailto:$email\">$lastname, $firstname</a>";
}
else {
echo "$lastname, $firstname";
}
}

But for some reason it still prints out a link for everyone. I'm testing on an in home server running php v4.0 and Apache 1.3.12 with MySQL 3.23.25 on a Windows 98 SE machine

[Anon]

Ah ... once $email is set, $email = "" will not unset it but rather sets it to a blank string (not the same thing). Try

if ($email)

[Anon]

Ahh!! Worked perfectly, thank you very much! I wish this board had a rating system similar to that of codeguru (<http://www.codeguru.com>), I would give this post a 10. Once again thank you for your help.