Important Question

koentros

I'm doing a webpage of products that are inside each category. What i want is when i click the category it loads up in a different page all the products of that category.
I hope you understand what i mean.
The trouble is, i cant pass the category field from one file to another in order to load all the products from the category i selected.

Here is the code of the category page:

$sql="SELECT * FROM $tbl_name ORDER BY nome_cat ASC";
// ORDER BY id DESC is order result by descending 
$result=mysql_query($sql);
?>
<br>
<table width="500" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1" bgcolor="#CCCCCC">
<tr>

<td width="8%" align="center" bgcolor="#214e00"><strong><font color="white"></strong></td>
<td width="55%" align="center" bgcolor="#214e00"><strong><font color="white">Categorias</strong></td>

</tr>

<?php
while($rows=mysql_fetch_array($result)){ // Start looping table row 
?>
<tr>


<td bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><a href="view_cat.php?id=<?php echo $rows['id_cat']; ?>"> <img src="img/categorias/<?php echo $rows['id_cat'];?>.jpg" width="50" height="50"></a><BR></td>
<td bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><a href="view_cat.php?id=<?php echo $rows['id_cat']; ?>"> <?php echo $rows['nome_cat']; ?></a><BR></td>

</tr>

<?php
// Exit looping and close connection 
}
mysql_close();
?>
<tr>
<td colspan="5" align="right" bgcolor="#c1f55c"></td>
</tr>
</table>

And here is the page where it is supposed to appear the products from the category selected:

$sql="SELECT * FROM $tbl_name WHERE cat="here is my doubt" ORDER BY nome ASC";
// ORDER BY id DESC is order result by descending 
$result=mysql_query($sql);
?>
<br>
<table width="700" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1" bgcolor="#CCCCCC">
<tr>
<td width="6%" align="center" bgcolor="#214e00"><strong><font color="white">#</strong></td>
<td width="18%" align="center" bgcolor="#214e00"><strong> <font color="white">Referência</strong></td>
<td width="8%" align="center" bgcolor="#214e00"><strong><font color="white">Foto</strong></td>
<td width="55%" align="center" bgcolor="#214e00"><strong><font color="white">Produto</strong></td>
<td width="13%" align="center" bgcolor="#214e00"><strong><font color="white">Data/Hora</strong></td>
</tr>

<?php
while($rows=mysql_fetch_array($result)){ // Start looping table row 
?>
<tr>
<td bgcolor="#FFFFFF" align="center"><?php echo $rows['id']; ?></td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><?php echo $rows['ref']; ?></td>
<td bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><a href="ver_produtos.php?id=<?php echo $rows['id']; ?>">  <img src="img/produtos/<?php echo $rows['id'];?>.jpg" width="50" height="50"></a><BR></td>
<td bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><a href="ver_produtos.php?id=<?php echo $rows['id']; ?>"><?php echo $rows['nome']; ?></a><BR></td>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><?php echo $rows['datetime']; ?></td>
</tr>

<?php
// Exit looping and close connection 
}
mysql_close();
?>

koentros

bradgrafelman;11004165 wrote:
In the first script, you're passing along the 'cat_id' field via the query string to the second page. Presumably, that value uniquely identifies a category in the SQL table, thus you can use that same value on the second page in order to select the appropriate rows.

I tried that using sessions even but it always passes the last record of the table..
How would i pass the value from one page to the other without doing so?

koentros

bradgrafelman;11004168 wrote:
What does the HTML generated from the while() loop in the first script look like? Don't those links contain the 'cat_id' value in the query string?

Also, using sessions doesn't make any sense - how do you know what value to store in the session when the user hasn't even clicked on any links yet?

Maybe i forgot to say that i have 2 tables:

categories(categorias)

id_cat
name_cat

2nd table:

products(produtos)

id
name
cat.

The first script uses the first table and the second uses the second table.
the thing is i need to use the value in id_cat to select all the products in the products table with that cat.

And i cant just pass the variable from one file to the other because they are internal variables and it just doesnt save itself for the other file.

Im feeling dumb here. If it was for you what modifications would you do to the code to make what i want work?

Derokorian

<a href="view_cat.php?id=<?php echo $rows['id_cat']; ?>">

That's from your first script, so you've already passed the category id to the next script. Its accessible in $_GET['id'].

koentros

Derokorian;11004172 wrote:
That's from your first script, so you've already passed the category id to the next script. Its accessible in $_GET['id'].

Let me see and ill get back to you.

koentros

bradgrafelman;11004173 wrote:
Do the values in the "cat" column in the second table refer to the "id_cat" or the "name_cat" column from the first table? If it's the former, then you'd simply use value you're already passing in the query string (as Derokorian points out above).

If it's the latter, then I'd say your real problem is that you have a poorly designed database. The best solution would then of course be... redesign the database. The second best solution would probably be to do a JOIN between the two tables. Finally, the last solution would be to change the links such that they pass the category name rather than the ID value (but this might not even be feasible/safe to do unless you've got a UNIQUE index on the 'name_cat' column in the first table).

Its the first thing you said. It's not poorly constructed 😉. I actually didnt know I could use the $_GET to get the value from another file so its working now!

Thank you both for the help, you rock!
PS: Sorry for making such a big deal out of something so simple.

Thus improvement in my knowledge was made!

Cheers!