Question

I am trying to select multiple rows from the database and then separate the rows into array values so I can use them throughout my code.

This is what I have right now…

$result = mysql_query("SELECT url, image, placement FROM advert
 WHERE user='1'") or die(mysql_error());

//This grabs 3 rows with placement name equal to 'sideadtop','sideadmiddle','sideadbottom'

 ($row =  mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_NUM));

$keytop = array_search('sideadtop', $row);
$sideadtop['url'] == $row[$keytop]['url'];
$sideadtop['image'] == $row[$keytop]['image'];

$keymiddle = array_search('sideadmiddle', $row);
$sideadmiddle['url'] == $row[$keymiddle]['url'];
$sideadmiddle['image'] == $row[$keymiddle]['image'];

I am trying to get the url and image values for each ad placement value. I am not sure how the output for the mysql query is sent to php. Is it sent as a multideminsional array or just a array?

Should I be calling individual MySQL queries or is there an easy way to call multiple rows and than separate them after?

Answer 1

mysql_fetch_* will only fetch one row. I think what you want is this:

$result = mysql_query("SELECT url, image, placement FROM advert WHERE user='1'") 
or die(mysql_error());

$adverts = array();

while(($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))) {
    $adverts[$row['placement']] = $row;
}

It will create an array like this:

Array(
  'sideadtop' => Array(
       'url' => ..., 
       'image' => ...,
       'placement' => ...
   ),
   'sideadmiddle' => Array(...),
   'sideadbottom' => Array(...)
)

You can access the individual adverts with $adverts['sideadtop'], $adverts['sideadmiddle'], etc.

Imo this is a better approach than creating a variable for each element.