Question

I have two tables that I want to query and merge based on a category_id.

My events table has a column called event_category_id that creates a relationship between the event and it’s category. The value is an int.

In my categories table I have a column called category_id which is what I want to match on and replace the int value with the varchar value of category_name.

What’s my syntax? Thanks for the help!

categories
CREATE TABLEwp_wild_dbem_categories(
category_idint(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
category_nametinytext NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (category_id)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=5 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1

events
CREATE TABLEwp_wild_dbem_events(
event_idmediumint(9) NOT NULL auto_increment,
event_authormediumint(9) default NULL,
event_nametinytext NOT NULL,
event_start_timetime NOT NULL default '00:00:00',
event_end_timetime NOT NULL default '00:00:00',
event_start_datedate NOT NULL default '0000-00-00',
event_end_datedate default NULL,
event_notestext,
event_rsvptinyint(1) NOT NULL default '0',
event_seatstinyint(4) default NULL,
event_contactperson_idmediumint(9) default NULL,
location_idmediumint(9) NOT NULL default '0',
recurrence_idmediumint(9) default NULL,
event_category_idint(11) default NULL,
UNIQUE KEYevent_id(event_id)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=26 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1

Answer 1

I don’t think you want a UNION. You probably want something like this:

SELECT e.event_id, e.other_field, c.category_name
FROM events e JOIN categories c ON (e.category_id=c.category_id)
WHERE some_condition;