Displaying sections with the articles in these sections below

gkt2310

Firstly, sorry about the weird title, couldn't think how to describe this one??

I am trying to make a page that will display a list of sections, with the items that fit in each section below each respective one. E.g.

Section 1
Item in section 1
Another Item in section 1
Another Item in section 1

Section 2
Item in section 2
Another Item in section 2
Another Item in section 2

Section 3 ... and so on.

I guess I need some kind of loop, but not sure where to start.

Should also say that, I have created 2 tables in my database. One contains the actual info and each record contains a number relative to which section it fits into. Then I have another table, which shows which number equals which section.

So table 1 would have something like:

Item 1 -- Section 3
Item 2 -- Section 2
Item 3 -- Section 4
Item 4 -- Section 1

And table 2 would have:

Section 1 -- Help
Section 2 -- Advice
Section 3 -- Suggestions
Section 4 -- Soloutions

Any suggestions?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks - Gareth

leatherback

What have you tried so far?

gkt2310

the things I tried completely didn't work, really struggling with quite a few things at the mo. just finished reading 2 wrox books - good, but feeling overwhelmed. It's annoying because I know exactly what I want to do, i just can't do it!!!

leatherback

I mean.. Do you know how to query a database? How to show the results? And are you only looking for the logic? Or are you stuck alreday at getting any information from the database?

gkt2310

heya

i have managed to creat the backend to insert items into the database (including a drop-down list that is generated by the table with the sections in - i know it's sad but I was very proud of myself for doing that!!).

what i need is a loop that will go something like.

everytime there is a section: output the section name
everytime there is a record linked to this section: output it here

and keep re-running that??

leatherback

What you need to do is:

// Get the info from the database:
$query = "Select * from table1 left join table2 on table1.IDCOLUM = table2.MATCHINGIDCOLUM"
$result = mysql_query($query) or die('AAAAAAHH It didn\'t work: '.mysql_error());

// Retrieve data

$lastsection = "";

While($row=mysql_fetch_array($result))
  {
   if($lastsection <> $row[SECTIONNAMECOLUM])
     {
       $lastsection = $row[SECTIONNAMECOLUM];
       echo $lastsection;
      }
    // Echo all the other output here
  }