Radio button

Jene200

Hi,

I have two sets of radibotton groups like

1 2 3
X Y Z .

i can select either one from each group.That means 1&X,1&Y 1&z,2&x,2&y..like that.

If i select the combination 1&x i need to get a rand article and its details from the category(1)
if i select the combination 2&x i need to get a rand article and its details from the category(4)

Depends upon the combination i need to dispay a rand article from a specified category.

Is this possible using php..?

Any advice/help is appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
Jene.

kidgeek_dfw

I'd suggest some type of lookup table and logical mapping table

columns like so in the lu table
lu_id, whatever info

columns like so in the map table...
map_id, lu_id, radio_1, radio_2

This way you can do a one to many structure

Select * where radio_1 = whatever & radio_2 = whatever

From here randomize the info...

Is that what you're thinking?

There's many ways to do this, but yes PHP can do it... of course...

kidgeek_dfw

whoops one sec let me give you the correct select statment...

SELECT *
FROM
LU_TBL lu, MAP_TBL map
WHERE
lu.LU_ID = map.LU_ID AND
map.radio_1 = whatever AND
map.radio_2 = whatever

sorry about that...

you get the idea though....

Jene200

Thanks kidgeek_dfw.

Are you suggesting me to create two table and then select the information whatever i want. Its quite confusing..I already have an article table and i was trying to get the combinations from a php page and according to the selection i am trying to get some random result from the article table.

Can you please explain little more so that i can try to work it out. I am not good in php.I am learning it and doing some modifications on my script.

Thank you so much.
Jene.

kidgeek_dfw

yeah and it might be to logical for what you are doing...

The idea behind a mapping table is to assign the different radio buttons to an article...

So let's say you have the following in your article table...

(NOTE: the columns names and data below will not line up in this forum)

art_id | art_title

1 | my article 1
2 | my article 2

So then maybe you have a radio Look Up Table

lu_id | lu_lbl

1 | X
2 | Y
3 | Z
4 | 1
5 | 2
6 | 3
(using the same names that you have here 1,2,3 is a bit confusing in the lu_lbl column)

Then maybe you could simplifiy your Logical Mapping Table....

(NOTE: this is simply assigning each radio button that applies to each article)

Instead of:
map_id | radio_1 | radio_2

do a structure like:

map_id | lu_id | art_id

1 | 1 | 2
2 | 2 | 2
3 | 4 | 2
4 | 1 | 1
5 | 6 | 1

So now in this example the combos of 1,2,4 are assigned to article 2

With this you could score the results so the one that has the highest score (more lu_id's coming back) could be the top result....

Or give the ones coming back an id and randomly pick which article to show...

It's kind of hard to tell you what to do not knowing what exactly is going on...

Hope that helps....

In the above example a join, is an itermediate deal, but once you learn joins you'll use them all the time and they really help keeping you organized in db structure...

KidGeek

Jene200

Thanks kidgeek_dfw.

What i am exactly trying is something like this.

Are you looking for a technical or other article?

Technical
other

Author is from US or other country ?

US
Other

3.Which of the following categories would you like to check?

tech
sci
Math

If he selects Technical&US&Tech i need to display a random article from the category A,Category B and category C.

If he selects Technical&US&sci i need to display a random article from the category A,Category B and category D.

Same with other combinations too.

I hope this example will help you to understand what i am thinking. Please help me.I am really confused here.

Thanks you somuch.
Jene.

kidgeek_dfw

Jene,

Well you took on a good itermediate to maybe advanced project here... <grin>

Maybe someone can give you some simpler ideas, pretty simple to me though...

Because your last category could have many selections, this is called a many to one relationship in the database world.

Because I think you should use a map table, this gives you a many to many relationship in the database. Meaning that you can assign more than one article to more than one selection in two different tables... Takes a twisted mind to understand sometimes...

With what you have described you can hard code the first two field into your article id table, but your last field you'll have to map it out...
But since I'm against hard coding into one table lets go through this...

In your article table you should have at least 2 fields
article_id (primary key) and article column
art_id | article

Now let's build a look up table...
The lookup table is only the name and describing of each of the choices...
You can use this over and over, it does not match directly to the article table...
So it would look like this
lu_id | lu_lbl note: lbl = label

Now your going to build a mapping table
The mapping table matches the label to the article
map_id | art_id | lu_id

So in your select it would look something like this:

SELECT art.art_id, art.article
FROM article art, lookup lu, map
WHERE
(art.art_id = map.art_id AND
lu.lu_id = map.lu_id) AND
(lu.lu_lbl = 'choice1' AND
lu.lu_lbl = 'choice2' AND
lu.lu_lbl = 'choice3')

This is join between 3 tables Article, Lookup and Map.
You might have to play with the above to give you the results you need...
But here's what is happening, only when 3 of the choices match will rows be returned... If you want any result that matches any of the choices, then use OR instead of AND in between the choices... Remember to use () to keep the selection of the join seperate from the choices...

There are a whole lot of ways to do this...

you could also create a table for each type of choice

you could also hard code this into 3 fields in the article table and forget the join....

However let's say down the road you want to populate some drop downs from the lookup table... Then you'll need to add another field in the mapping table called grp_id and yep you guessed it a groups table...
and you'll join this just like you did the other tables....

Its coders preference from here...

But either way you need to put some thought into what is easier for you to maintain and what is scalable...

Hope that helps....