Conditional Statement within do ...while

RealBopeep

Hi,
This is my first time posting here, so I hope I am not missing something very obvious. I have already successfully created a PHP page that outputs journal article citations, but I also want to include links to some of the articles that my library has online or owns the journal titles. These links are in the database, but I can't seem to figure out how to write the PHP to properly evaluate it. Here is an example of what I have come up with so far:

<?php
if ( $totalRows_DeptQuery1a == 0)
{
echo "There are NO CITATIONS for this query.";
}

else
{
echo "The following $totalRows_DeptQuery1a citation(s) were found from the <a href=". $row_DeptQuery1a['DeptURL'] . " target='new.html'>" . $colname_DeptQuery1a . " Department.</a></h4>";
}
{
do
{
if ( $row_DeptQuery1a['AURL'] == NULL)
{
echo "This citation does not have a link.";
}
if ($row_DeptQuery1a['AURL'] = 1)
{
echo "This citation DOES INCLUDE a link.";
}
}
while( $row_DeptQuery1a = mysql_fetch_assoc($DeptQuery1a));
}

However, a problem occures when the query results in zero. I thought it would ignore everything within the DO...WHILE loop, once it qualified as no citations, but it continues to prove true to the second IF and outputs the PHP, since there is actaully nothing in the database to find.
Is this clear? If not, I can clarify it a little more, or if anyone has any ideas for possible solutions, I would be really greatful! Would it help if I said you would be helping to educate the future since I am a librarian?? (Probably not, I know!)
Thanks for your help!
RealBopeep

stolzyboy

read this and it should make sense as to why the condition runs the first time regardless, took it straight from php.net

do..while loops are very similar to while loops, except the truth expression is checked at the end of each iteration instead of in the beginning. The main difference from regular while loops is that the first iteration of a do..while loop is guaranteed to run (the truth expression is only checked at the end of the iteration), whereas it's may not necessarily run with a regular while loop (the truth expression is checked at the beginning of each iteration, if it evaluates to FALSE right from the beginning, the loop execution would end immediately).

RealBopeep

OK. That explanation I do understand; however, do you know of a way to write somesort of GOTO statement like:

<?php
if ( $totalRows_DeptQuery1a == 0)
{
echo "There are NO CITATIONS for this query.";
GOTO LINE 37
}
//then continue with the else do and while statements

I don't know if this is possible and if it is, how much of a pain is it? Because everytime you change the code, you need to change the GOTO statement.