Using 'if' for a field that's not id

zonkd

I use this to choose an action -

if($_GET['id'] == 1 OR $_GET['id'] == 11

But it would be better for me to choose the field, "cat" , which is an enum field.

Help, Experts, what is the exact way of saying in the same way -

if 'cat' == y

do this

please?

laserlight

But it would be better for me to choose the field, "cat" , which is an enum field.

What do you mean by 'field' and 'enum'? PHP doesnt have an enumerated type, so are you talking about writing an SQL statement to query a database?

zonkd

laserlight! Good to hear from you.

Yes, exactly, sorry.

laserlight

Okay, what have to tried?

zonkd

Hi laserlight

I use this - and it works fine ....

if($GET['id'] == 1 OR $GET['id'] == 11)
{
include 'long.inc.php';
}
else
{
include 'others.inc.php';
}

It would be much more useful if I could use an enum field instead of the id. This doesn't work though, for some reason. (A reason I don't know.)

$cat = $_GET['cat'];
if($cat == 'y')
{ //do as required etc
}

Be grateful if you could advise how it should go, please?

laserlight

Instead of providing broken code that is meaningless and asking others to fix it, state what problem you are trying to solve.

zonkd

It's not that I am asking others to fix it, laserlight, it is that I hope people with the knowledge will give guidance.

Why you Experts come to the forum and help novices like me is to be HELPFUL, laserlight, not bullying.

And that's the way most Gurus are, and that's why forums are one of the greatest parts of the internet. It's no help to me if you want to inflate your ego by inferring how busy you are. You are not the only busy person.

You have been very helpful in the past. Very sorry to find you on a bad day.

laserlight

Okay, you dont get my drift: my guess is that you want to have pages that are accessed by changing the query string. So based on $GET['id'] or $GET['cat'] you include the respective content. You want to use a database to manage this connection of variables to content.

The thing is, from what you have written, I can only guess that the above is what you want to do.
Your code snippet:

$cat = $_GET['cat'];
if($cat == 'y')
{ //do as required etc
}

doesnt tell me anything more.

justsomeone

zonkd,

laserlight is right. You know exactly what you are trying to achieve, but you haven't expressed it well, and we can't read your mind. This isn't being unhelpful, we just don't know what help you need.

$cat = $_GET['cat'];
if($cat == 'y')
{ //do as required etc
}

Your code above will only work if "cat" is a variable passed to the script as a GET variable and has a value of "y". You already mention that a similar snippet works for a variable called "id".

So, does the link to your script look something like "www.yourstuff.com/yourscript.php?id=11&cat=y" ?

If not, then $_GET['cat'] doesn't exist.

Where do you expect to get the value of 'cat' from?

zonkd

Hello, justsomeone. Very good to hear from you again.

Thanks very much for your diplomacy there. I’m kept really busy at the studio, and I would like to know this answer. More and more, you see a disobligingness creeping into forums – and it is really a bad trend.

Anyway, my problem is this: I use php and mysql for a school website.

This is where “id” is declared as a variable -

if( isset($GET['id']))

{
$id = $GET['id'];
$result = mysql_query("SELECT
sub,
head,
pix,
intro,
story,
byline,
link,
DATE_FORMAT(updated, '%d/%m/%y %H%i') as ud
FROM connex
WHERE id=$id
");

But what I would like to do is to be able to use an enum field called “long” which gives the two categories I would like to use. (“y” or “n”)

But if I declare

$long = $_GET['long'];

just like “id”, I don’t seem to be able to use it the same way, even when I declare “long” in the select query.

I don’t doubt there’s a reason for it, but I don’t know it – and would like to know very much how to use it. Hope you, or laserlight, might be able to put me on the right track. All the best

justsomeone

$_GET is an array of variables passed into your script via HTTP GET. In more simple terms, these are the bits after your script name (all teh stuff after the question mark).

So, in the link www.somesite.com/somescript.php?size=12&colour=red there are two GET variables, size and colour, which are available within PHP as $GET['colour'] and $GET['size']

If you're not passing in a variable called long in the above way, then $_GET['long'] won't be set.

Does that help explain things?

I think that your confusion is that you have a fieldname called "id" in your database table, and you also have a GET variable called "id". When you do

 $id = $_GET['id'];

you're taking the GET variable (passed in as described above, yadda yadda) and assigning its value to the PHP variable $id. This has nothing at all to do with your database.

Your select statement then tries to find all the records whose id matches the one passed in as the GET variable.

Do you want to further restrict the records selected so that they only include the ones with value of 'y' in the field called 'long'? if so you could add and long = 'y' after your WHERE id=$id. But again, I'm still only guessing at what you actually want to achieve.

And just to reiterate, laserlight wasn't being unhelpful, she was just trying to get you to restate your question in a way that made the problem clearly. laserlight spends a lot of time answering questions here. and she's really cool. and I want her to be my girlfriend. or something.

zonkd

QUOTE]... laserlight spends a lot of time answering questions here. and she's really cool. and I want her to be my girlfriend. or something.[/QUOTE]

Something, justsomeone? But point well taken. Actually, I have some really helpful advice from laserlight in my php notebook, so I was really pleased when she first replied. (I've visited Singapore a couple of times - and Malaysia - and have wonderful memories of the area.)

I'm just going to print off your reply so I can study it closely. Yes, that's what I want to do. When "y" comes up, a different include is used that slices up the field - an article - into small pieces (with explode) and displays them from page to page.

Many thanks, and plan to be back soon.

zonkd

That sounds too simple to be it, but it probably is the way...

For the 'y' articles, I add long = 'y' and for the 'n' articles, I add long = 'n'

(To explain briefly, the db contains long and short articles. The long articles need to be split into small amounts, hence the need to divide the two different sorts.)

I'll try that ...

zonkd

Sorry this is dragging on, justsomeone.

Very briefly: A db has a load of stories. Longer-than-normal stories have the enum field set to 'y'. ('n' is the default.)

As soon as a user clicks on an id number to choose a story, we have to know if it is an 'n' story or a 'y'.

It seems that it is too late to separate them with a where clause.

There needs to be something to decide how the story is to be treated when the user clicks. (The user doesn't know whether they are long or short pieces.)

So it seemed to me that an enum field would be the simplest way. However, (as you can see) it's far from straight-forward, and so far, far from simple(!).