Primary Key

blind487

this seems so obvious... i can't figure out why i can't figure it out.

this is obviously partial script

$count = 1;

while ($count < 3) {           //this number will be equal to the number of news articles to show

$sql = "SELECT * from news WHERE PRIMARY = $count";   

$r = mysql_db_query("news",$sql); 

$array = mysql_fetch_array($r); 

//code displaying $array

the code works fine... but i can't seem to SELECT * from tnews WHERE PRIMARY = ANYTHING. It doesn't work when i use even a known value if i change primary to any other variable and use a known value.. i'm fine. is there some easier way to get a row with a certain primary key that is defined???

thanks to ANYONE for the help

drawmack

first you should be using a for loop and not a while loop

second you should do this in a single query.

try something like this

<?php
//using a variable adds to readability and for a bit more
//maintainability this can be moved to an include file.
$num_to_disp = 3;

$sql = "SELECT * FROM news WHERE PRIMARY <= " . $num_to_disp;
$query - @mysql_query($sql) or die(mysql_errno() . ": " . mysql_error . "\n");

for($i=0;$i<$num_to_disp;$i++) {
  //process mysql row $i here
} //end for

blind487

hmm...

that does end up working, really though, it ends up just being a rewrite of the code that I had beforehand. Although that code does work just fine, what I'm trying to do is access one specific row defined by its primary key. I'm going to be adding news articles, and I don't want to have to sort them as I add them to the database, I just want the primary key to auto-increment for me and display the most recent 3 posts on the front page. Another page will be used to show all the older articles, and once I can get this code to work, the rest will be a cakewalk.

edit: Sorry... Thank you very much for a very speedy reply.

edit: so i tried just doing it like this:

$sql = "select * from news ORDER BY date DESC";
$r = mysql_db_query("news",$sql);

and it seems to work.

Duh.