Home/ Questions/Q 6872105
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-27T03:53:10+00:00

I’d like to take data from a field which is a string of words

  • 0

I’d like to take data from a field which is a string of words separated by commas and save each of those words to a variable. After which, I’d like to take the stored words and use them to retrieve information.

An example of this would be a field containing the information: “Bob,Sue,Adam,Tim,Hank” My goal is to select each name, using the commas to detect each different name, and save each name to a variable or, more efficiently, an array, then use a “for” command or similar to display relevant info about each person.

I’m using MySQLi commands, which I have been told are poorly documented; however, that is what my book instructed me to use.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The explode function the other answers suggest will work fine, but it would be more elegant if you stored these names separately in a second table.

    So, where you now have:

    • main: id, names

    I suggest:

    • main: id
    • names: main_id, name

    You can then retrieve the names belonging to one row with a query such as:

    SELECT name FROM names WHERE id = $id

    To add a name belonging to a certain id, use:

    INSERT INTO TABLE names (main_id, name) VALUES ($id, "$newname")
    • 0