Image Display Problem

[artisticre]

I have a greeting card database that has different card packs. Each pack has different amount of pictures: some have 5, some have 4, some have 3. How do I display the images from the database if one card pack has less than 5 images. The only way I know how to do it will create broken links for the images that aren't being used...... Help

CREATE TABLE card_images (
card_imageid tinyint(4) NOT NULL auto_increment,
image1 varchar(50) NOT NULL default '',
image2 varchar(50) NOT NULL default '',
image3 varchar(50) NOT NULL default '',
image4 varchar(50) NOT NULL default '',
image5 varchar(50) NOT NULL default '',
PRIMARY KEY (card_imageid)
) TYPE=MyISAM;

?

[lazzerous]

here's where multi dimensional array's come into play...

$images[0] = "images/imageone.gif";
$images[1] = "images/imagetwo.gif";
$images[2] = "images/imagethree.gif";
$images[3] = "images/imagefour.gif";
$images[4] = "images/imagefive.gif";

// for displaying only images that exist:
for ($i=0; $i<sizeof($images); $i++)
    {
    if (isset($image[$i]) && $image[$i] != "")
        {
        echo "<img src='$image[$i]'>\n";
        }
    }

// for storing in the db in ONE field (better make it a decent size)
$imagedata = serialize($images);

// insert into card_images set image_data = '$imagedata';

// for data retrieval from db
// select image_data from card_images where whatever='whatever';
$images = unserialize($row[image_data]);

hope this helps,
-=Lazzerous=-

[artisticre]

I don't follow how this works. Instead of hard coding the image name, how can I make it pull the name from my database?

[lazzerous]

ok...

lets say you have this as your db schema:

CREATE TABLE card_images ( 
card_imageid tinyint(4) NOT NULL auto_increment, 
images varchar(250) NOT NULL default '', 
PRIMARY KEY (card_imageid) 
) TYPE=MyISAM; 

the 'images' field will house the data for one to five images
to get the images out you would select the images field from this table and unserialize the data.
serialize() takes an array and kicks it out into a string that can be later rebuilt as an array, so you can store an array of values in one field of a database, thus making you capable of storing an unknown number of elements.

example:

$get_images = "select images from card_images where card_imageid = '7'";
$do_get_images = mysql_query($get_images);
$row=mysql_fetch_array($do_get_images);

$image_array = unserialize($row[images]);

// $image_array now looks like this:
$image_array[0] = "/images/imageone.gif";
$image_array[1] = "/images/imagetwo.gif";
$image_array[2] = "/images/imagethree.gif";
$image_array[3] = "/images/imagefour.gif";
$image_array[4] = "/images/imagefive.gif";

make sense?