[RESOLVED] get unique values in table field

[vang]

hi,
i have a table sports:

sports                  students (field type: text)
-----------------------------------
football                 John, Mary, Sally
basket ball            John, 
tennis                   Alex, Mary
swimming              Sally, Tom, John

i want to get all the unique names in this 'students' field.
How can i do so?

[laserlight]

Change your database 🙂

Instead of having students be a multi-valued field, have a students table. Now, a sport can involve multiple students, and a student can play multiple sports. To represent this many to many relationship, create a third table, thus:

Table: sports
Fields: id, name

Table: students
Fields: id, name

Table: students_sports
Fields: sport_id, student_id

Now, getting all unique students is just a matter of:

SELECT name FROM students;

[planetphp]

I agree with the above but you could possibly do it by using explode if the format is always the same.

Retrieve your row from the database and do:

$students = explode(", ", $row_returned_from_sql_statament);

[vang]

thank you so much for your guidance 🙂