Question

Possible Duplicate:
How to LEFT JOIN two tables with the same column name

I have this statement:

$sql = "SELECT * FROM deliveries AS del 
        LEFT JOIN job_sheet ON job_sheet.job_id=del.jID
        LEFT JOIN hierarchy AS h ON job_sheet.h_str=h.hID
        LEFT JOIN customers ON h.cust=customers.ID";

My problem is that the ‘customers’ table has a column called ID and so does the ‘deliveries’ table. The issue starts when I run a while loop to output results.

while($data = mysql_fetch_array($sql))
{
     echo $data['ID'];
}

it outputs the value of the last table that was joined… How can I separate the two? I mean, I need to be able to output ‘ID’ from both tables, but in the query, it’s the last table that wins. Renaming the column is not an option…

Any inputs?

Answer 1

I figured it out with some tweaking:

    SELECT 
       deliveries.*, 
       job_sheet.*,
       customers.ID as CUSTOMERID
       FROM deliveries 
          LEFT JOIN job_sheet ON job_sheet.job_id=deliveries.jID 
          LEFT JOIN hierarchy ON job_sheet.h_str=hierarchy.hID 
          LEFT JOIN customers ON hierarchy.cust=customers.ID

Given that the only thing I needed from the customers table was an aliased ‘ID’ while keeping every other column from the other two tables.

My while loop would ultimately change to:

while($data = mysql_fetch_array($sql))
{
    echo $data['CUSTOMERID']; // For the customer's ID
    echo $data['ID']; // For the delivery ID
}