Dynamic List items

jonvmark

Hello,

I’m trying to build a multi-level unordered list from a database query. I can't figure out a good way to do this.

How can I create this:

<ul>
  <li>Home</li>
  <li>About Us</li>
  <li>Products
    <ul>
      <li>Animals
        <ul>
          <li>Monkeys</li>
          <li>Elephants</li>
        </ul>
      </li>
      <li>Cages
        <ul>
          <li>40 lb. Cages</li>
          <li>80 lb. Cages</li>
        </ul>
      </li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>Contact Us </li>
</ul>

From a table that looks like this:

Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance!
Jon

eriksmoen

$q1 = @mysql_query("SELECT Category FROM YOURDB GROUP BY Category ORDER BY Category;");
while($r1 = @mysql_fetch_array($q1))
{
    $sub1 = $r1['Category']; // your animals/cages field
    echo "<ol>";
    $q2 = @mysql_query("SELECT * FROM YOURDB WHERE Category='$sub1';");
    while($r2 = @mysql_fetch_array($q2))
    {
         echo "<li> $r2[subcategory]";
    }
    echo "</ol>";
}

hope an example such as that helps ya...

jonvmark

Thanks! I don't think that quite accomplishes everything I'm after though.

How can I get it to build the whole list with sub and sub-sub lists? In other words, I need to write the top-level items (Home, About Us, Products, Contact Us), AND have it know when to start building the sub-level items under products (Product>Animals, Products>Cages), AND know when to start building the sub-sub-level items under each (Products>Animals>Monkeys).

Keep in mind - not every category has a sub or sub-sub-category so there probably needs to be some conditional statements in there.

Any ideas?
Thanks!

Roger_Ramjet

This comes up at least once a week so do a search of the forums for 'loop control' and you'll find all the answers and code you need.

PS: your query should be

$sql = "SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY Menuitem, Sub1, Sub2";

Do not under any circumstances put a query in the loop as Nate suggests, total waste of time. If it need to get data from multiple tables then use a table Join to get the data in 1 query.