Question

I have two tables, GAMES and USERS set up with the following fields:

tblGAMES-->
GAME_ID (int) primary key,
P1_ID (int),
P2_ID (int),
P3_ID (int),
P4_ID (int)

tblUSERS-->
USER_ID (int) primary key,
FIRST_NAME (text),
LAST_NAME (text)

I am querying my database to print out the details of every game row. Example:

GAME_ID:1, P1:1, P2:2, P3:3, P4:4

but instead of printing out the id which is stored in tblGAMES I would like to print out the first name of each player as it appears in the corresponding row in tblUSERS. Is this doable using a single query as opposed to multiple queries?

end result-->GAME_ID:1, P1:David, P2:Paul, P3:John, P4:Bobby

Answer 1

You’ll need to join the users table 4 times…

select g.GAME_ID, 
       u1.FIRST_NAME as ulname, 
       u2.FIRST_NAME as u2name, 
       u3.FIRST_NAME as u3name, 
       u4.FIRST_NAME as u4name
from tblGAMES as g 
  left join tblUSERS as u1 on g.P1_ID =u1.USER_ID 
  left join tblUSERS as u2 on g.P2_ID =u2.USER_ID 
  left join tblUSERS as u3 on g.P3_ID =u3.USER_ID 
  left join tblUSERS as u4 on g.P4_ID =u4.USER_ID 

(untested)