[Resolved] searching array results

g7ibby

Hello everybody.

I am creating a php page for a company to be able to create surveys into a database and email them to employees. The survey page is going to hit the database and return questions that exist in the table. Most of the questions are multiple choice that have from 4 to 10 possible answers. The table field structure is

and so on

there will be at least 1 answer for each question but I need to check to see if there is a value present for answer 2 and so on before moving to the next question. How do I check this?

So far I have the following code to display the form

include("connect.inc"); 
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM survey",$db); 
       while ($myrow = mysql_fetch_array($result)) { 
    //Display Question 
       printf("<TR><TD>%s</TD></TR>\n", $PHP_SELF, $myrow["question"]); 
    //Display Answers 
       printf("<TR><TD><input name=\"radiobutton\" type=\"radio\" value=\"%s\"></TD><TD>%s</TD></TR>/n", 
       $PHP_SELF, $myrow["answer1"], $myrow["answer1"]); 
    //Display additional answers if they exist
    //? ? ? ? ?

And this is where im stumped
How do I check to see if any further answers exist in the array before closing the table, adding the submit button, and ending the form?

My initial thoughts are to start another loop with a if/else involved but i do not know how to check to see if something else exist in the array.

Thank you

PHPdev

First thing I noticed is that your Table design is not that flexable. Dont worry we all have done this at one time or another...

What you may think about is breaking this table out like so..

Questions

ID | Question

1 | What is the date today?

Answers

ID | Question_id | Answer

1 | 1 | Jan 1 1990
2 | 1 | Jan 1 1970

This way you are not limited to a set number of options for a question. This will also allow you to do a seperate query per question not needing to know if there are more options for the current question.. something like this:

$sql = "select id, question from questions";
$rs = mysql_query($sql);

// ouput question

while ($data = mysql_fetch_array($rs)) {
   $answer_query = "select id, answer from answers";
   $answer_results = mysql_query($answer_query);
   while ($answer_data = mysql_fetch_array($answer_results)) {

// output this questions potential answers
}
}

But if you chose do use your current table structure, you can use the is_null() function to see if $myrow["answer2"] is empty

Hope this helps...

PHPdev