Question

The following script works correctly however I don’t like it because it isn’t elegant and is just down right messy.

Without getting too advanced (meaning I don’t want OOP style) I just want to minimize this code in a procedural fashion. Mainly I want to combine the SQL queries and clean up the mess.

//get page url and query db to find the correct page
$this_page = $_GET['page'];
$this_page = escape_data($_GET['page']);

//Make sure page exists - if it doesn't redirect the browser
$SQL_page_exist = "SELECT * FROM pages_learn_more WHERE page_title = '$this_page'";
$SPE_result = mysql_query($SQL_page_exist);

while ($details = mysql_fetch_array($SPE_result))
{
$page_id          =     $details['id'];
$page_title       =     $details['page_title'];
$main_title       =     $details['main_title'];
$main_content     =     $details['main_content'];
$sub_title        =     $details['sub_title'];
$sub_content      =     $details['sub_content'];    
}

if(mysql_num_rows($SPE_result) == 0) 
{
echo '<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" Content="0; URL=page_not_found.php">';

} else {

$SQL = 
    "SELECT   ptt.tool_tip_link
       FROM   pages_tool_tip ptt
       JOIN   pages_to_pages ptp
         ON   ptp.tool_tip_id = ptt.tool_tip_id
      WHERE   ptp.learn_more_id = '$page_id'";

  $result = mysql_query($SQL); // or die(mysql_error()); 

  //set array for reference_keys variable which may contain 0 to 20 keys
  $reference_keys = array();
  while ($db_field = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{   
 $reference_keys[] =     $db_field['tool_tip_link'];    
}   

Ok so this above code works as it should, but it is very ugly and I have been trying for the past 2 hours to refine it into something clean, simple and beautiful, but alas my skills are not yet there and all i get is mysql errors.

My most recent attempt is:

$SQL = 
"
     SELECT     *
       FROM     pages_learn_more plm

       JOIN     pages_tool_tip ptt, pages_to_pages ptp 
         ON     ptp.tool_tip_id = ptt.tool_tip_id
      WHERE     plm.page_title = '$this_page' AND ptp.learn_more_id = plm.id 
";

$result = mysql_query($SQL); // or die(mysql_error()); 

$reference_keys = array();
while ($details = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{   
        $reference_keys[] =     $details['tool_tip_link'];  
        $page_id          =     $details['id'];
        $page_title       =     $details['page_title'];
        $main_title       =     $details['main_title'];
        $main_content     =     $details['main_content'];
        $sub_title        =     $details['sub_title'];
        $sub_content      =     $details['sub_content'];    
}

**This is like my 30th failed attempt to clean up this code. Can someone with knowledge please help me out and if possible please explain your input…

Thank you **

As a side note:
I even tried many queries in PHPmyAdmin, which taught me that the order of your tables in your SELECT of FROM statement will impact your result so for example SELECT pages_learn_more plm, pages_tool_tip ptt != SELECT pages_tool_tip ptt, pages_learn_more plm And I don’t understand how the order of these statements impacts the results. (When used in the full query 1 Will result in an error and the other Shows the tables)

PIC OF MY DATABASE SCHEME IF IT HELPS

Answer 1

You have a strange mix of implicit (comma-separated tables) and explicit JOINs, which affects the order the tables appear in. Implicit joins are discouraged, so use only explicit ones.

Since you are not using all columns, do not SELECT *, especially since some tables have the same column names (tool_tip_id), which causes ambiguity. Instead, be a little more explicit about what you’re selecting. You can even replace plm.* below with the exact list of columns you need from that table.

$SQL = 
"
     SELECT
       plm.*,
       ptt.tool_tip_link
     FROM
         pages_learn_more plm
         LEFT JOIN pages_to_pages ptp ON plm.id = ptp.learn_more_id
         LEFT JOIN pages_tool_tip ptt ON ptp.tool_tip_id = ptt.tool_tip_id
      WHERE
         plm.page_title = '$this_page'
";

In your while loop, the only columns you access are those of pages_learn_more and one from pages_tool_tip, so in the SELECT list, I used plm.* for all columns on that table, and ptt.tool_tip_link only from the other table.

Since your primary table appears to be pages_learn_more which may or may not have associated records in pages_to_pages, I substituted a LEFT JOIN, so even if it had no associated tool tip, the query could still return a record (with a NULL tooltip).

Technically, the second LEFT JOIN could just be an INNER JOIN since there must be a record in pages_tool_tip if one exists pages_to_pages.