Question

I have this query:

$relevantwords = {"one" , "two" , "three" } ;

foreach ($relevantwords as $word)
     {
        $query .=  "SELECT * FROM delhi_items WHERE heading like '%$word%' AND id!={$entry_row['id']} AND visible=1 UNION ALL "  ; 
     }
$query = implode( " " , explode(" " , $query , -3) ) ;                                                

      $query .= " ORDER BY time_stamp DESC LIMIT 0, 20 " ;
     $result_set = mysql_query($query, $connection);

This causes several duplicates in my resultset. Is there a way to detect and remove these duplicates from the resultset ? I know I should probably try to avoid the duplicates in the first place, but I am unable to figure that out.

Also I tried distinct keyword, it didn’t work (because its a loop, the same entry is fetched again and again).

Laslty I am kind of an amateur so please tell me if I am doing something fundamentally uncool with such a long sql query in a for loop.

Thanks

Answer 1

I would try to have one SELECT and no UNION and DISTINCT. It will probably be a faster query:

$relevantwords = {"one" , "two" , "three" } ;

$querycondition = "" ;
foreach ($relevantwords as $word)
     {
        $querycondition .= " heading LIKE '%$word%' OR"
     }
$querycondition = substr($querycondition ,0 ,strlen($querycondition)-2 ) ;

$query = " SELECT * "
       . " FROM delhi_items "
       . " WHERE ( "
       .           $querycondition 
       . "       ) "
       . "   AND id!={$entry_row['id']} "
       . "   AND visible=1 "
       . " ORDER BY time_stamp DESC "
       . " LIMIT 0, 20 " ; 
$result_set = mysql_query($query, $connection);