ignoring duplicate entries

[ex1]

hey dudes,

i was wondering if there is a way of extracting 1 value from many duplicate entries?

firstly... my table structure - which ive simplified for ease

id | trip | type | date

1 | trip 1 | a | 1 december
2 | trip 1 | b | 1 december
3 | trip 1 | c | 4 december
4 | trip 2 | a | 2 december
5 | trip 2 | b | 2 december
6 | trip 3 | c | 7 december
7 | trip 3 | c | 7 december
8 | trip 3 | c | 8 december
9 | trip 3 | c | 9 december

ok see heres what i want to do...

as you can see there is a date column. i want to generate a select drop down in a form(which i can do) with the applicaple dates for the pre selected trip.

so the dates applicaple to trip 1 are;

1 december and 4 december

the dates applicaple to trip 2 are;

2 december

and the dates applicaple to trip 3 are;

7 december, 8 december and 9 december

is it possible for me to select the applicable dates without printing duplicate dates? its just the php select code i need not the code to generate the drop down - i know that already.

my first thought is to have the table above but create another table with the trip and date without duplicating the date over and over. so if there were three trips 1's leaving on 1st december i would only add that once.

hope thats easy enough to understand!

cheers!

david*

[Drakla]

SELECT DISTINCT trip, date FROM yatable;

Should be enough

[ex1]

cheers dude.

that worked - i didnt realise there were other commands that could be 'added' on to the basic SELECT command.

are there many of these?

thanks again - this is resolved.

david*

[Drakla]

Yes, there are some fantastic extras with quite a lot of the SQL commands that make your life much less misery. Just doing things like creating temporary tables with select commands to reduce your result set, then doing more processing on the temporary table knowing that it'll be dumped at the end of the script is a lifesaver.

Create temporary table myTable as select a,b,c FROM sometable WHERE foo=bar;

I'd recommend getting the compiled html manual for MySQL and Php from their websites and just keeping them on your desktop and then using the favourites feature to add quick links to the bits you'll use most, like selects, inserts as that'll have you ripping out far less of your hair.

later mate

[ex1]

cheers dude - will do that!

david*