Joins in MySQL

[fahrvergnuugen]

Suppose you have two tables:

jobs
ship_date

Now, some of the jobs have a ship date and some do not because, well, they haven't shipped yet.

using:

$query = "SELECT jobs.*, ship_date.ship_date FROM jobs, ship_date WHERE jobs.job_number = ship_date.job_number";

works great for joining the two tables to get the ship dates for the jobs... the problem is, it doesn't return the unshipped jobs because they do not exist in the ship_date table.

Is there any way to fix this with a mysql statement? Or am I going to have to do it the slow way and write two queries to get two different arrays in PHP?

[fahrvergnuugen]

I answered my own question.

$query = "SELECT sop.job_number, ship.actual_ship_date FROM sop LEFT JOIN ship ON sop.job_number=ship.job_number";

does exactly what I need.