removing duplicates when looping through DB rows

[sol01]

DBASE:

| ID | apointment | Date |

| 1 | meet jack at 5:00pm | 23/12/2003 |
| 2 | meet jane at 1:00pm | 23/12/2003 |
| 3 | meet rob at 2:00am | 23/12/2003 |
| 4 | meet jude at 1:30pm | 22/12/2003 |
| 5 | meet fred at 5:09pm | 22/12/2003 |
| 6 | meet Lucy at 5:40pm | 21/12/2003 |

Say I have the above list in my DB and I want to output them to the browser.

EXAMPLE:

23/12/2003
Meet Jack at 5:00pm

23/12/2003 <-- the date is the same as the above so I dont need it here
Meet Jane at 1:00pm

I would like it to look like this ...

23/12/2003
Meet Jack at 5:00pm
Meet Jane at 1:00pm
Meet rob at 2:00am

22/12/2003
meet jude at 1:30pm

In other words when I loop through the dbase I want to only list the same date once, not one for every entry.

Currently, after I SELECT, I do a while loop but have not had much luck. Don't have much working code to show here and was wondering if anyone can give some suggestions...

I hope I was clear enough..

[bad76]

Hi,
memorize the date at bottom of every loop (init to 0...), if different to prew date echo it else not.

see you

[sol01]

Here is an example using ADODB:

$rs = $dbconn->Execute("SELECT * FROM table order by ID DESC");
if($dbconn->ErrorNo() != 0) {
print "error";
}

while (!$rs->EOF) {

if ($date != $rs->fields['DATE']) {
    $date = $rs->fields['DAY'];
} else {
$date = "";
}

echo $rs->fields['DATE'].'<br>'.$rs->fields['Apointment'];

$rs->MoveNext();
}

If there are only 2 entrys per date then it does fine but if over 2 entrys it displays the date once per every 2 entrys so if there are 3 entrys for the same date it displays the same date twice.

Any ideas?

[bad76]

Just an hint:

$rs = $dbconn->Execute("SELECT * FROM table order by ID DESC"); 
if($dbconn->ErrorNo() != 0) print "error"; 


$olddate = 0;
while (!$rs->EOF) 
{ 

  if($olddate!=$rs->fields['DATE']) 
                           echo $rs->fields['DATE'];
  echo '<br>'.$rs->fields['Apointment']; 
  $rs->MoveNext(); 
} 

[sol01]

Well no because the olddate would need to be adjusted in order for it to compare between that and the current date.

This is sort of where I am leaning although it is flawed, I would like some suggestions:

while (!$rs->EOF) {
$olddate = 1;

if($olddate == 0) {
$date = $rs->fields['DATE'];

   object_blog_entry($date, nl2br($rs->fields['CONTENT']); <- Function merly displays formated, nothing else
   $olddate = 1; 

} elseif ($olddate == 1) {

   $date = "";
   object_blog_entry($date, nl2br($rs->fields['CONTENT']); <- Function merly displays formated, nothing else

}

$rs->MoveNext();

It either shows all or nothing, I know why it doesn't work but perhaps posting this code might give people an idea of what I might be doing.

TX in advanced