stats/tables, the best way?

[statrat]

i want to display a table of players names and their stats. easy enough. it works fine. but what about players with no stats (and therefore no records in the stat table)? i still want to display their name. like Mary's:

Joe Aay 100 20 .400
Mary Bee -- -- -- --
Long Cee 120 33 .444

you get the picture.

so should i select all the players/records in the stats table, and only the players in the players table who don't have records in the stat table, then put them in an array so i can alphabetize/sort them?

is there a better way?

also, is it best practice to do things (sorting, summing, etc.?) in mysql when possible, or in php?

thank you.

[philhale]

One thing you can do is loop through all your users. For each user, look for the stats. When looking for stats, use the mysql_num_rows() function to calculate the number of events. If none exist, display results with dashes. If number of rows is greater than zero, then display the performance data as you have shown.

Good luck.

Phil.