Voting poll control logic

[Sld]

Howdy dwds, it´s like this im coding a voting poll and need to do something to control the votes, so one of my ideias was to create another table and save their the poll_id , author , option so that i could know wich user voted.

But i think this is not the best way since, if I want to know how many votes there is in one option I must do a query if I have 20 options .. 20 querys (see what I mean?)

PS: Didn't use cookies 'cause they dont control nothing if your browser doesnt support cookies or have them disabled.

Tks in advance, tell me some ideias please 🙂

[Stoned_Gecko]

Not necessarily ... you can always use GROUP BY. This example would be based on a system that has multiple polls. So you will have these tables:

poll: poll_id, title, author, expiry_date
poll_options: poll_id, option_id, option_text
poll_votes: poll_id, option_id, user_id

To count the results use this:

SELECT option_id,COUNT(*) FROM poll_votes WHERE poll_id = "{the poll ID} GROUP BY option_id

That should give you a row for each option along with the count for that option.

[Sld]

Well, you were right I solved that problem but got into another 😛

Have this tables:

Poll: Id, Author, Topic
Poll_options: Id, Pollid, Optionx
Poll_votes: Id, Pollid, Optionid, Author

The tables are related by the id's, my problem is:

If I want to list Poll 2 how can I list the options with no votes, I made this query:

SELECT poll_options.pollid,optionx,count(*) as votes
FROM poll_votes,poll_options
WHERE poll_votes.optionid = poll_options.id and poll_options.pollid='2'
GROUP BY poll_votes.optionid

This will only list the options with votes (regists on poll_votes)

Need some help, tks in advance 🙂

[Stoned_Gecko]

Well, if the option is not present in the result, then there is no votes for it. This logic will require two queries: one to get the list of available options, and the other to get the votes for those options. Any option that's not present in the second query has no votes.

[Sld]

Howdy, and thanks for your help dwd already solved that issue but here is another 😛

I needed to list all the polls on data base, so I did it like this: since the mysql_query only returned the ones that had votes with another query I got the ones with no votes and mixed them in an array and it worked my problem now it's aplying a pagination script on it since the data comes from an array instead of a mysql query, can someone give me some tips on that?

Tks in advance 😛

PS: I know my english is not too good 😛

[Sld]

Well the issue is already solved, I updated mysql and made use of not it and union command and solved it all with a couple of querys, anyway tks 4 those who have helped 🙂