Header Problems

cap97

I'm currently doing the following, which displays banners created by such and such based on a bannerID passed through a URL:


<?php

echo "More Banners By $Credit<P>";    

$sql="SELECT * FROM camb_banners WHERE Credit = \"$Credit\" ORDER BY Title";
$result=mysql_query($sql,$db);

$num = mysql_num_rows($result);
$cur = 1;

while ($num >= $cur)
{

 $row = mysql_fetch_array($result);

 $BannerID = $row["BannerID"];
 $Title = $row["Title"];
 $Date = $row["Date"];

 if ($BannerID != $bannerID)
 {
  echo "<A HREF=index.php?bannerID=$BannerID>$Title</A><BR>";
 }   

 $cur++;

}

   ?>

You can see the results by viewing:

http://www.livinglegend.org/CAMB/index.php?bannerID=1

My problem is this. I currently have it set to say:

More banners by John Doe

Title1 
Title2 
Title3 
etc.

That works great if there's actually results. But if there aren't, it says "More Banners By John Doe" and then lists nothing underneath, which looks sloppy. However, if I put "More Banners By John Doe" inside the SQL argument, it prints that sentence for ever banner listed, which looks even worse. So how can I get it to print once, but at the same time only print if there are results to print?

siwis

Your problem isn't confined to just there being no banners to a given artist. I tried it with banner id = 99 and got an output which I shouldn't really be able to see.

Your question is also a little vague.
Do you want it to not show artists where there are no stored banners? OR is my test for ID=99 what you're wanting to prevent?

cap97

Originally posted by siwis
Your problem isn't confined to just there being no banners to a given artist. I tried it with banner id = 99 and got an output which I shouldn't really be able to see.

Ah crap! Didn't even think of that problem. Dang...

Your question is also a little vague.
Do you want it to not show artists where there are no stored banners? OR is my test for ID=99 what you're wanting to prevent?

Okay well, problem number one is solved. I simply did the following, which worked fine:


$sql="SELECT * FROM camb_banners WHERE Credit = \"$Credit\" ORDER BY Title";
$result=mysql_query($sql,$db);

$num = mysql_num_rows($result);
$cur = 1;

while ($num >= $cur)
{

 $row = mysql_fetch_array($result);

 $BannerID = $row["BannerID"];
 $Title = $row["Title"];
 $Date = $row["Date"];  
 $Credit = $row["Credit"];

 if ($BannerID != $bannerID)
 {
  if ($Credit != $last_credit)
  {
   echo "More Banners By $Credit<P>";
  }
  echo "<A HREF=index.php?bannerID=$BannerID>$Title</A><BR>";
  $last_credit = $row["Credit"];
 }

 $cur++;

}

Problem #2

This one is new, as you just pointed it out to me. I guess if someone manually types in their own bannerID, they get a chopped up page. Not sure how to fix that...

siwis

Problem #2 is easily remedied.

use

$valid = mysql_num_rows($query);
if ($valid == "0") {
//show some error message
} else {
//show output
};

But it doesn't end there. What if I were to place a non-standard character as the ID? Again, your code isn't robust to handle the error and you'll get some lovely sql error messages to screen.

Problem #1 can be handled in much the same way. just check whether the number of rows is greater than 1, if so, then echo your more banners by statement. If not, don't!

The alternative to checking for "greater than 1, would be to check that it is not equal to one. As this would be inside the passed side of your == 0 test, you already know that it can't be 0 therefore it must be greater than one if it isn't equal to one. Get it?