Question

I have 3 tables:

Users – uID (INT AUTO_INCREMENT), name (VARCHAR)

Movies – mID (IN AUTO_INCREMENT), title (VARCHAR)

Watched – uID (INT), mID (INT)

I’m writing a php function that constructs a query which adds records of movies watched by a particular person. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

function set_watched($name, $movies){
    $sql = "SET @userid = (SELECT uID FROM users WHERE name = '$name' LIMIT 1); ";
    $sql .= "INSERT INTO watched (uID, mID) VALUES ('";

    foreach ($movies as $index => $movie){

    }

}

My question:
Is there a way to combine the @userid variable with the results of a SELECT mID FROM MOVIES WHERE title = $movie OR title = $movie [generated with foreach]?

I don’t want to generate separate SELECT statements for every movie title. Perhaps I don’t even have to use the @userid variable at all?

Answer 1

Try something like this:

$sql = "INSERT INTO watched (uID, mID)
  SELECT User.uID, Movies.mID
  FROM (SELECT uID FROM Users WHERE Users.name = '$name' LIMIT 1) AS User, Movies      
  WHERE ";

foreach ($movies as $index => $movie){
  $sql .= "Movies.title = '$movie' OR ";
}

$sql = substr($sql, 0, -4) . ";";