Question

I am very new to PHP and I have a test project:

I want to make the code more efficient as it takes some time to generate.
Thanks a lot, Nat

The code it uses is as follows:

    $result1 = mysql_fetch_assoc(mysql_query("SELECT COUNT(*) AS `Rows`, `1` FROM `things` GROUP BY  `1` ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 0 , 1"));
    $result2 = mysql_fetch_assoc(mysql_query("SELECT COUNT(*) AS `Rows`, `2` FROM `things` GROUP BY  `2` ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 0 , 1"));
    $result3 = mysql_fetch_assoc(mysql_query("SELECT COUNT(*) AS `Rows`, `3` FROM `things` GROUP BY  `3` ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 0 , 1"));
    $result4 = mysql_fetch_assoc(mysql_query("SELECT COUNT(*) AS `Rows`, `4` FROM `things` GROUP BY  `4` ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 0 , 1"));

    echo $result1["1"];
    echo " ";
    echo $result2["2"];
    echo " ";
    echo $result3["3"];
    echo " ";
    echo $result4["4"];

    mysql_close($con);      
    ?>

Answer 1

I am assuming good faith & cleaned up the code presented the best way possible using the methods you want to use.

<?

$count = 1;
$results = array();
for ($count; $count <= 4; $count++) {
  $query = sprintf("SELECT COUNT(*) AS `Rows`, `%d` FROM `things` GROUP BY  `1` ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1", $count)
  $results[] = mysql_fetch_assoc(mysql_query($query));
}

if (!empty($results)) {
  echo exlplode(" ", $results);
}

?>