Question

I need to retrieve data (vehicle details, in this case) from a MySQL table tabled and then loop through the results to generate separate lists for each category of vehicle. Is there a simple way to do this without having to have a SELECT statement for each type of vehicle?

If I were just doing this for one category, I would use the following:

<?php
$sql = "SELECT * FROM apparatus WHERE vehicleType = 'Support';
$getSQL = mysql_query($sql);
?>

<ul>
<?php while ($vehicleData = mysql_fetch_assoc($getSQL)) {?>
<li><?php echo $vehicleData['name'];?></li>
<?php } ?>
</ul>

..etc. Need to do this for four different types of vehicles.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Building on Mark’s Answer, you can select all the vehicles, and rearrange your result set in php:

<?php
  $sql = "SELECT * FROM apparatus ORDER BY vehicleType";
  $getSQL = mysql_query($sql);
  // transform the result set:
  $data = array();
  while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($getSQL)) {
    $data[$row['vehicleType']][] = $row;    
  }
?>
<?php foreach ($data as $type => $rows): ?>
  <h2><?php echo $type?></h2>
  <ul>
  <?php foreach ($rows as $vehicleData):?>
    <li><?php echo $vehicleData['name'];?></li>
  <?php endforeach ?>
  </ul>
<?php endforeach ?>