[Resolved] seperating comma seperated field entries

[ali_p]

Hi

I'm kind of stuck with what i amtrying to do, i want to seperate my comma seperated field and replace the comma with a line break when displaying
so that url1 , url2 , url3 and so on
becomes
url1
url2
url3
and so on.

I know what to do when i know how many urls, but this number is indefinite .
Could anybody point me in the right direction?

Many thanks

$sql = "SELECT *
		FROM test_url";
$result = mysql_query($sql, $conn)or die(mysql_error());

// Set variables from the query for use in the html
while ($row =mysql_fetch_array($result)){
	$url=$row['url'];
	$url_elements = explode(",",$url);
$sql_url = $url_elements[2]."<br>".$url_elements[1]."<br>".$url_elements[0];
$display_block = "$url_elements";
}	

[kburger]

fgetcsv() might be useful here. Now that I look at your problem more carefully, maybe not. fgetcsv is great for parsing csv files, but that's not what you've got.

Oops, sorry.

Couldn't you just use

$newurl = str_replace(",","<br>", $row['url']);

[bodzan]

...to have a field where data is comma separated is bad practice someone said to me once...

Why didn't you make an additional db table where all you links should go with associated foreign key that will help you in figuring out where they come from...

Like this:
Have a basic table like this:
id|group|stuff

And have URL's table like:
id|url|groupID

So your data structure should be quite obvious (having group descriptions and mutual elements in one table and you could have as many URL's as you want in the second table)...

You could strech it forever and easiest thing in the world would be to list them in the way you need them:

$q = "SELECT * FROM $urls WHERE groupID = 'whatever'";
$result = mysql_query($q);
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
    echo $row['url']."<br>";
}

But in order to keep your db layout do what kburger suggested...

[ali_p]

Many thanks for both of your replies. I would normally opt for a seperate table which holds the url but currently my main query joins about 5 tables at this stage and its getting quite confusing. Thanks but for now i will use the str_replace option.