Question

I am currently using MySQL and MyISAM.

I have a function of which returns an array of user IDs of either friends or users in general in my application, and when displaying them a foreach seemed best.

Now my issue is that I only have the IDs, so I would need to nest a database call to get each user’s other info (i.e. name, avatar, other fields) based on the user ID in the loop.

I do not expect hundreds of thousands of users (mainly for hobby learning), although how should I do this one, such as the flexibility of placing code in a foreach for display, but not relying on ID arrays so I am out of luck to using a single query?

Any general structures or tips on what I can display the list appropriately with?

Is my amount of queries (1:1 per users in list) inappropriate? (although pages 0..n of users, 10 at a time make it seem not as bad I just realize.)

Answer 1

You could use the IN() MySQL method, i.e.

SELECT username,email,etc FROM user_table WHERE userid IN (1,15,36,105)

That will return all rows where the userid matches those ID’s. It gets less efficient the more ID’s you add but the 10 or so you mention should be just fine.