Question

I just realized that I’m going to have to start aliasing my database calls due to repeating column names in my join tables. Is there a way to automatically tell SQL to alias all my column names so that they are returned with a prefix of the table name? Otherwise it appears to be quite confusing when only some of them are aliased. Just trying to be consistent without writing tons of extra code.

$sql = "SELECT contracts.po_number, contracts.start_date, contracts.end_date, contracts.description, contracts.taa_required, contracts.account_overdue, jobs.id AS jobs_id, jobs.job_number, companies.id AS companies_id, companies.name AS companies_name
    FROM contracts
    LEFT JOIN jobs ON contracts.job_id = jobs.id
    LEFT JOIN companies ON contracts.company_id = companies.id
    WHERE contracts.id = '$id'
    ORDER BY contracts.end_date";

Answer 1

No, but you can make life a little easier by using table aliases:

SELECT c.po_number, c.start_date, c.end_date, c.description, 
    c.taa_required, c.account_overdue, j.id AS jobs_id, j.job_number, 
    cm.id AS companies_id, cm.name AS companies_name 
FROM contracts c
LEFT JOIN jobs j ON c.job_id = j.id 
LEFT JOIN companies cm ON c.company_id = cm.id 
WHERE c.id = '$id' 
ORDER BY c.end_date