Break multiple strings in a $variable

Confessions

When pulling out things from my MySQL table, I get a variable with multiple values.

The reason I get that is because some rows in my MySQL table are like this:

Food | Type
Fruit | Banana
Fruit | Apple

If I pull out type where food = fruit, and assign the type a variable, it has two values - both banana and apple.

So if I echo "$type<br>", I would get banana<br>apple<br>.

I was wondering if it's possible to split the two fruits from $type, and how.

NogDog

[man]explode/man would probably be the simplest way within PHP.

Of course, this would seem to point to the need for some database normalization, since having multiple "atomic" values in one column violates the first normal form.

Confessions

Hello, thanks for that!

I managed to create some explode() stuff, but didn't succeed when applying it with my case. It treats $fruit as two things, and not really as "banana apple".

Would it be easy adding a Type 2 column and moving everything with conflicting Type (in regards to food) there with the help of MySQL commands? The table is pretty big so it won't be reasonable having to do it manually.

Thanks in advance.

NogDog

I've got a feeling I'm not entirely understanding the question, and may have made some wrong assumptions and over-complicated things. Do you just want a way to list each "type" for a given "food"? If so, with MySQL it would be something like:

$sql = "SELECT type FROM table_name WHERE food = 'fruit'";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
echo "<h3>Results for 'Fruit':</h3>\n";
echo "<ul>\n";
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
{
   echo "<li>".$row['type']."</li>\n";
}
echo "<ul>\n";

Confessions

Yes exactly, I want to list each "type" for a given "food" (food being fruit in this case), but most importantly, I want to assign each "type" a variable on its own.

What I mean is if it's possible to have:

$banana = ".$row['type']." (first result)
$apple = ".$row['type']." (second result)

By echoing only ".$row['type'].", I get both results at the same time, but I want to assign them separate variables (since I want to be able to use them at different places due to layout issues).

EDIT: I succeeded in exploding it to two bits. Thanks! Unless there's an easier way, I'll use this for now.

Also, does violating the first normal form have any real consequences?

laserlight

Confessions wrote:
Also, does violating the first normal form have any real consequences?

Maybe. For example, it makes the use of an index impossible, or at least much more difficult. You will also have duplication of data, which may lead to inconsistent data.

Weedpacket

It also puts a larger burden on the application using the database, because now it has to do additional processing on the data returned before the data that it gets is in a usable form.