find individual comma separated values in database

Administrator side has a multi select field for related courses. It gets saved as 1,5,10,14


On my courses page i want to show find the related courses using their id's of 1,5,10,14.

Do they have to be exploded first?

what kind of query would i have to write to find the individual records? Is there a webassist extension that i could use for this or is it pretty simple?

Dave,

Without understanding you multi-select code, I cannot be positive that what I suggest will work.

But, if your multi-select is actually creating an array - meaning it is saving the entire sting of ID is one variable, than you can just loop through each item. You could do the same if it is a list.

Let's say your variable containing the array is $courses,

You could then create a for each loop which will query for the related info and then display it.

<?php 
foreach ($courses AS $item) { ?>

<?php
mysql_select_db($database_YourDB, $YourDB);
$query_course = "SELECT coursename, relatedinfo FROM courses WHERE id = '$item'";
$course = mysql_query($query_course, $YourDB) or die(mysql_error());
$row_course = mysql_fetch_assoc($course);
$totalRows_course = mysql_num_rows($course);
?>

<p>Course: <?php echo $row_course['coursename']; ?></p>
<p>Related Info: <?php echo $row_course['relatedinfo']; ?></p>
<hr />

<?php
mysql_free_result($course);
?>
<?php } ?>

You could explode your comma separated string into an array, and then build a query that would pull the records for all those IDs, and then loop through that recordset on your page.

Right after your original recordset, you could have something like this.
This is assuming that your comma separated string is $row_Recordset1['related_course_ids']


$related_courses_query="WHERE 1=2";
if (isset($row_Recordset1['related_course_ids']) && $row_Recordset1['related_course_ids'] !=''){
$favorites_query="WHERE ";
$favorites_list_array=explode(",",$row_Recordset1['related_course_ids']);
foreach($id_list_array as $id){
if($id!='' && is_numeric($id)){
$id_query.="course_id=$id OR ";
$list=true;
}
}
if($list){
$id_query=substr($id_query,0,-3);
}else{
$id_query="WHERE 1=2";
}
}

//then for your courses query
mysql_select_db($database_dbc, $dbc);
$query_rsCourses = "SELECT * FROM courses $id_query";
$getPhotos = mysql_query($query_rsCourses, $dbc) or die(mysql_error());
$row_rsCourses = mysql_fetch_assoc($rsCourses);




Then you can loop though the rsCourses recordset, and provide a link to each related course.

Is that what you were looking for?

Tom

Yes but it looks semi complicated.. anyone know of any extensions that can do this on the fly?

if all you are looking to do is find a row in your recordset which includes one of the numbers, you could use the MySQL operator IN

"SELECT * FROM courses WHERE id IN ('1', '5', '10', '14')"


if the parameters are integers rather than strings you may not need the inverted commas

tutorial_mysql_in_and_between.php3