Question

Let me explain what I mean with that question:

Lets say I have to tables like these:

customers
id customer location
1   Adam     UK
2   Pete     US

values
id value
1   10
1    7
2    3
2   41

Let’s ignore here for a moment that that (and the following query) wouldn’t make a lot of sense. It’s meant as a simplified example.

Now, if I run this query

SELECT id, customer, value FROM customers INNER JOIN values GROUP BY id

I should get this result (distinct by id)

id customer value
1    Adam    10
2    Pete     3

What I would like to be able to do is get that to use it in a search result list, but for actual displaying of the results I’d like to do something like this:

Customer: Adam
Values: 10, 7

So, basically, while I need to have a result set that’s distinct for the ID, I’d still like to somehow save the rows dropped by the GROUP BY to show the values list like above. What is the best way to do this?

Answer 1

Look at http://mysql.com/group_concat – which only will work in MySql.

Better link: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/group-by-functions.html#function_group-concat