Question

So my website allows users to create a contacts list and now I have added user-named categories. I am currently displaying the list of contacts using a while loop of the associative array generated from my SQL query.

So it looks like this:

Contacts:
Contact 1 
Contact 2
Contact 3

Now I have a new column in the database for categories of contacts, and I cannot figure out how to order them by, and display the name of the contact category. I am trying to get it to look like this:

Contacts:
Category 1
Contact 1
Contact 2
Contact 3
Category 2
Contact 1
Contact 2
Contact 3

My actual code if you need it:

<?php
                //START CONTACTS LOOP       
            $contacts_query = "SELECT id, name FROM contacts WHERE ownerid = '$userID' ORDER BY `name` ASC";
            $run_contacts_query = mysql_query($contacts_query);

            if($run_contacts_query){

                while($c_data = mysql_fetch_assoc($run_contacts_query)){
                    $id = $c_data['id'];
                    $name = $c_data['name'];
                    ?>
                    <li><a href="contact.php?id=<?=$id?>"><?=$name?></a></li>
                    <?php
                    }} //END CONTACTS LOOP 
            ?>

Answer 1

Just also retrieve the category and sort first by category and then by name. And check whether the category is different than the last:

$contacts_query = "SELECT id, name, category";
$contacts_query.= " FROM contacts";
$contacts_query.= " WHERE ownerid = '$userID'";
$contacts_query.= " ORDER BY `category`, `name` ASC";

$run_contacts_query = mysql_query($contacts_query);

if($run_contacts_query) {
    $currentCategory = null;

    while($c_data = mysql_fetch_assoc($run_contacts_query)){
        if ($c_data['category'] != $currentCategory) {
            echo '<li>' . $c_data['category'] . '</li>';
            $currentCategory = $c_data['category'];
        }

        echo '<li><a href="contact.php?id=' . $id . '">' . $name . '</a></li>';
    }
}