Counting Values

ollmorris

How can I add the amount of values in a database ($row[values]) together without actually knowing how many of them there might be?

Thanks

trexx

just a bit of SQL will do:

SELECT SUM( value_column ) FROM your_table;

ollmorris

this is my code:

$total = mysql_query("SELECT sum( value ) FROM table");
echo $total

however I get RESOURCE ID #4

How can I sort this! just out of curiosity are there any other ways to do this?

Thanks

xblue

what mysql_query returns is not the result itself, only an identifier for it. you'll need one of the mysql_fetch_ functions to access the result.

example:

$result = mysql_query("SELECT SUM(value) AS totalvalue FROM table"); 
$row=mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
echo $row['totalvalue'];

ollmorris

Thanks that works great.

How can I maintain sessions, even when the user closes the browser for say, an hour?

xblue

check your session settings in the php.ini file.

using cookies (if available) must be enabled, and you can set the cookie lifetime there, too.

that should work for users who accept cookies. keep in mind that in case the user doesn't accept cookies, there no way to keep the session intact once he leaves your site.

[typo edited]

ollmorris

What is the function to do that without editing the PHP.INI file?

xblue

ini_set()

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.ini-set.php

the manual has a search box, just entering php.ini would have brought this up as 2nd hit 😉