Question

Im looping through a feedback type comment system on a users page, finding the latest 6 posts.

To display the post how I want, I have to grab data from 3 tables.

I figure it’d be less db intensive if it was all pulled in one query, but I’m not sure how to write it, being suck at JOINs and things.

This is my existing code

$sql_result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM feedback WHERE user='1' ORDER BY date desc LIMIT 6", $db);
while($rs = mysql_fetch_array($sql_result)) {

   $sql_result2 = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM members WHERE id= '$rs[author]'", $db); 
   $rs2 = mysql_fetch_array($sql_result2);

   if ($rs2[clan] != 0) { 
      $sql_result3 = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM clans WHERE id= '$rs2[clan]' LIMIT 1", $db);
      $rs3 = mysql_fetch_array($sql_result3);

     // write comment

Can someone give me a clue?

Answer 1

This should do it:

select * from feedback 
left join members on feedback.author = members.id 
left join clans on members.clan = clans.id
where feedback.user = 1

left join means if the table on the right has no matching row, a record with all null values is returned, so you still get the data from the table on the left.