Is there an easier to do this?

yoki

Hi,

I am trying to find if a presenting author in a database is already in my table 'presenting_authors' to avoid a duplicate entry once the user submits the form.

So in order to achieve this, I made the following function:

function find_duplicate_presenting_author($Prefix, $Last_Name, $First_Name, $Institution, $Department, $Address_Line_1, $Address_Line_2, $City, $Prov_ST_ID, $Country_ID, $ZIP_Postal_Code, $Phone_Country_Code, $Phone, $Fax_Country_Code, $Fax, $E_Mail) {

$query = "SELECT Presenting_Author_ID
from Presenting_Authors
WHERE Prefix = '".mysql_real_escape_string($Prefix)."' and Last_Name = '".mysql_real_escape_string($Last_Name)."' and First_Name = '".mysql_real_escape_string($First_Name)."' and Institution = '".mysql_real_escape_string($Institution)."' and Department = '".mysql_real_escape_string($Department)."' and Address_Line_1 = '".mysql_real_escape_string($Address_Line_1)."' and Address_Line_2 = '".mysql_real_escape_string($Address_Line_2)."' and City = '".mysql_real_escape_string($City)."' and Prov_ST_ID = '".mysql_real_escape_string($Prov_ST_ID)."' and Country_ID = '".mysql_real_escape_string($Country_ID)."' and ZIP_Postal_Code = '".mysql_real_escape_string($ZIP_Postal_Code)."' and Phone_Country_Code = '".mysql_real_escape_string($Phone_Country_Code)."' and Phone = '".mysql_real_escape_string($Phone)."' and Fax_Country_Code = '".mysql_real_escape_string($Fax_Country_Code)."' and Fax = '".mysql_real_escape_string($Fax)."' and E_Mail = '".mysql_real_escape_string($E_Mail)."'";

$result = mysql_query($query);
if( !( $result = mysql_query( $query ) ) ){
return 1;
}
list( $id ) = mysql_fetch_row( $result );
return $id;

}

Now as you can see, there is alot of fields passed to the functions. Could there be a way for me to shorten the code somehow? I find it very long and tedious and I would like to adapt it with other fields also....

Anyone can suggest something? Thansk in advance! 🙂

bpat1434

Well, you could use an array, and build your query dynamically:

<?php

function fdpa($fields)
{
$query = "SELECT Presenting_Author_ID
FROM Presenting_Authors
WHERE ";

foreach($fields as $field=>$val)
{
  $query.= $field."='".mysql_real_escape_string($val)."', ";
}
$query = substr($query, 0, -2); // removes the last ", "

// DEBUG LINE:
// echo $query
// Only uncomment the above line to make sure the query is being built properly

$result = mysql_query($query);
if(!$result){ return FALSE; }
else
{
  list( $id ) = mysql_fetch_array($result);
  return $id;
}
}
?>

Now, two things:
1.) Your array has to be in this form:

$fields = array('Prefix'=>'Mr.',
  'First_Name'=>'John',
  'Last_Name'=>'Doe');

2.) I chose to return false because of the following situation:
the id that is returned is 1. Well, 1 is considered false in your scripts eyes, so ID 1 is no different that a non-run query!!

~Brett