Question

I’m using WordPress and trying to create a view to make reviewing and analyzing my resort data a little easier. Resort data is stored in the post_meta table in WordPress and referenced in a custom post type known as “resorts”. The following query gives me the result set I want to parse:

SELECT a.id, a.post_type, a.post_title, b.post_id, b.meta_key, b.meta_value
FROM alpinezone_postmeta b
INNER JOIN alpinezone_posts a ON a.id = b.post_id
WHERE a.post_type = "resorts" 

What I want to do with this result set is have each unique meta_key of a set I define become a column and then each row should be a unique b.post_id (or a.id), which corresponds to an individual resort’s record.

So ultimately I end up with:

post_title |   phone_num      | state         |
resort1    |   800-200-1111   | Vermont       |
resort2    |   800-200-2222   | New Hampshire |
resort 3   |   800-200-2323   | Maine         |

Basically …… I’m not that great at MySQL so trying to figure out the best way to handle this. I do have a list of all the meta_key I want to place into columns, there are 36 of them capturing a range of information.

EDIT: Some more detail.

Current Structure – shows what table it comes from as well

*alpinezone_posts   alpinezone_postmeta alpinezone_postmeta*
post_title          meta_key            meta_value
----------------------------------------------------------------
sugarloaf           snow_phone          [phone]
sugarloaf           vertical_feet       2300
sugarloaf           site_url            sugarloaf.com
wachusett           snow_phone          [phone]
wachusett           vertical_feet       1000
wachusett           site_url            wachusett.com

These two tables are joined on post_id from table alpinezone_postmeta and id from table alpinezone_posts.

Only want results where the post_type in table alpinezone_posts is = “resorts”

How I want it to look in new view

post_title  snow_phone      vertical_feet   site_url
-------------------------------------------------------
sugarloaf   888-234-2222    2300            sugarloaf.com
wachusett   888-111-2222    1000            wachusett.com

Answer 1

You want to use is a cross-tabulated table or pivot table with “GROUP BY” like this example here: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MySQL/Pivot_table

You need to use something other then SUM() for strings though… like MAX():
http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?20,75357,75367#msg-75367

    SELECT p.post_title AS post_title,
         MAX(IF(m.meta_key='phone_num',m.meta_value,0)) AS phone_num,
         MAX(IF(m.meta_key='state',m.meta_value,0)) AS state
    FROM alpinezone_postmeta m
    INNER JOIN alpinezone_posts p ON m.post_id = p.id
    WHERE p.post_type = 'resorts'
    GROUP BY m.post_id`