Question

Hey guys, I created a list for fixtures.

$result = mysql_query("SELECT date FROM ".TBL_FIXTURES." WHERE compname = '$comp_name' GROUP BY date");
    $i = 1;
    $d = "Start";
    while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) 
    {
        $odate = $row['date'];
        $date=date("F j Y", $row['date']);
        echo "<p>Fixture $i - $d to $date</p>";
    }

As you can see from the query, the date is displayed from the fixtures table.
The way my system works is that when a fixture is “played”, it is removed from this table. Therefore when the entire round of fixtures are complete, there wont be any dates for that round in this table. They will be in another table.

Is there anyway I can run an other query for dates at the same time, and display only dates from the fixtures table if there isnt a date in the results table?

"SELECT * FROM ".TBL_CONF_RESULTS." 
                               WHERE compid = '$_GET[id]' && type2 = '2' ORDER BY date" 

That would be the second query!

EDIT FROM HERE ONWARDS…

Is there anyway I can select the date from two tables and then only use one if there are matches. Then use the rows of dates (GROUPED BY) to populate my query? Is that possible?

Answer 1

It sounds like you want to UNION the two result sets, akin to the following:

SELECT f.date FROM tbl_fixtures f
WHERE f.compname = '$comp_name'
UNION SELECT r.date FROM tbl_conf_results r
WHERE r.compid = '$_GET[id]' AND r.type2 = '2'
GROUP BY date

This should select f.date and add rows from r.date that aren’t already in the result set (at least this is the behaviour with T-SQL). Apparently it may not scale well, but there are many blogs on that (search: UNION T-SQL).