Need help with a SQL query

Anon

Hi, I have a MySQL table with a column that contains some of a web site directory's category names in the format:

Sports:Football😛layers

I am trying to build a query that locates all records that match the above category name OR if none exist its parent "Sports:Football" OR if none exist its parent "Sports". The top level category, in this case "Sports", will always have at least one matching record.

I know I can do this with multiple queries by checking the previous query's result, but I am trying to build a query that does it all in one lookup. Anyone have any ideas?

knickerlas

Hi
certainly can't see it happening in one query.

I do someting similar on some of my pages, I grab the whole lot (in my case based on a psge id) then run abuch of if/else stuff on it to determine if it's valid. For ex.

if(page_id) {
if sub_cat_exts() {
  do some stuff
] etc etc

I'm pretty certain you can't do it the way you'd like so post a more specific question if yo need a another opinion on how else to do it?

Good luck

Nick

Anon

Hmmm, I guess I was hoping for something along the logical lines of ...

SELECT * FROM table WHERE category = 'Sports:Football😛layers' OR IF NONE category = 'Sports:Football' OR IF NONE category = 'Sports'

... of course that does not work but I would have thought MySQL would have had some type of command equivelent to my made up "OR IF NONE".

Anyway, thanks for the info, I guess I will end up needing to do alot of lookups in deep categories or as you suggest grab all records that match the beginning of the category name and then somehow sort through them to find the record that matches the current category the closest.