Associative Array Structure Question

[condoug]

Hi all

I have a table with thousands of rows of data. Each row has many columns, two of which are:

Category
Sub-category

What I need to do is create an array in a PHP loop which associates all unique Sub-category strings to the unique Category strings from my table.

An example of the table data (Category / Sub-Category) would be as follows:

Apparel | Shoes
Apparel | trousers
Jewellery | Watches
Jewellery | Rings
Furniture | Chairs

Therefore my output array needs to be as follows:

array {
	'Apparel' 	=> array('Shoes','trousers'),
	'Jewellery' 	=> array('Watches','Rings'),
	'Furniture' 	=> array('Chairs')
}

How can I do this in PHP?

Here is my starting code:

	$qry = "SELECT category, sub-category FROM tblproducts";
	$res = mysql_query($qry);

[dalecosp]

condoug;11029357 wrote:

create an array in a PHP loop which associates all unique Sub-category strings to the unique Category strings from my table.

I note you've used the word "unique" twice now ... hmm. 😉

Here is my starting code:

	$qry = "SELECT category, sub-category FROM tblproducts";
	$res = mysql_query($qry);

I wouldn't select all the categories and sub-categories. Let your SQL server handle that for you. (And, incidentally, you should stop using mysql and start using mysqli or PDO ... )

At any rate, in pseudo-code:

select distinct category from tblproducts;
create array from that;
loop through this array, selecting the distinct sub-categories that have the current category as parent

Does this help at all?