Question

I had my query set up the other day as so

$query = "SELECT card_id,title,description,meta_description,seo_keywords,price 
FROM cards,card_cheapest order by card_id";

As you can see, I was selecting card_id,title,description,meta_description,seo_keywords from the table cards, and price was coming from cheapest_card. They both have the card_id in common (in both tables). However, I ran into a bit of an issue. When I run the query in navicat lite, I receive an error "card_id is ambiguous". Was I doing something wrong?

Answer 1

When 2 or more tables have a column that is named the same, you have to qualify the table you want the column to be from.

i.e.:

$query = "SELECT cards.card_id,title,description,meta_description,seo_keywords,price
FROM cards,card_cheapest order by card_id";

Furthermore, do you really want to run the query this way, without a WHERE/JOIN-clause to define how to JOIN the two tables?

$query = "SELECT cards.card_id,title,description,meta_description,seo_keywords,price 
FROM cards,card_cheapest WHERE cards.card_id = card_cheapest.card_id 
ORDER BY card_id";