Question

How do I know which of the OR statement was selected?
I would like the fetch to show the colour.col which was selected.

$parsed = array();
$result = mysql_query("SELECT *
FROM colour
LEFT JOIN shape ON colour.id = shape.id
WHERE shape.col1 = 'square' AND  colour.col1 = 'blue'
OR shape.col1 = 'square' AND  colour.col2 = 'pink'
OR shape.col1 = 'circle' AND  colour.col3 = 'red'
OR shape.col1 = 'triangle' AND  colour.col4 = 'yellow'
OR shape.col1 = 'rectangle' AND  colour.col5 = 'green'
");



while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{ 
echo "<tr>";
echo "<td>" . $row[col1] . "</td>";

**which colour column was selected?**
I would like to see the column header here (colour.col1,colour.col2...) not the value    (pink,green...)

echo "</tr>";

}

Answer 1

use an extra column to indicate the selected color:

SELECT *, 
       case when shape.col1 = 'square' and colour.col1 = 'blue'
            then 'blue' 
            when shape.col1 = 'square' and colour.col2 = 'pink'
            then 'pink' 
            ...
       end as selected_color
FROM colour
where ...