Question

the three tables I am trying to query are:

DB Structure:

roles_permissions: id, role_id, permission_id

user_roles: id, name, user_id

permissions: id, name

SQL Query

SELECT ur.name AS role_name,perm.name AS perm_name FROM user_roles AS ur
    INNER JOIN roles_permissions as p
    ON ur.id=p.role_id
    INNER JOIN permissions AS perm
    ON p.permission_id = perm.id
    WHERE ur.user_id='$account_id'

Result from above query

    array(11) {
  [0]=>
  array(2) {
    ["role_name"]=>
    string(5) "Owner"
    ["perm_name"]=>
    string(12) "view project"
  }
  [1]=>
  array(2) {
    ["role_name"]=>
    string(5) "Admin"
    ["perm_name"]=>
    string(12) "edit project"
  }
  [2]=>
  array(2) {
    ["role_name"]=>
    string(6) "Editor"
    ["perm_name"]=>
    string(14) "create project"
  }
  [3]=>
  array(2) {
    ["role_name"]=>
    string(5) "Owner"
    ["perm_name"]=>
    string(12) "view project"
  }
  [4]=>
  array(2) {
    ["role_name"]=>
    string(5) "Admin"
    ["perm_name"]=>
    string(12) "edit project"
  }
  [5]=>
  array(2) {
    ["role_name"]=>
    string(6) "Editor"
    ["perm_name"]=>
    string(14) "create project"
  }
  [6]=>
  array(2) {
    ["role_name"]=>
    string(5) "Owner"
    ["perm_name"]=>
    string(12) "view project"
  }
  [7]=>
  array(2) {
    ["role_name"]=>
    string(6) "Editor"
    ["perm_name"]=>
    string(12) "edit project"
  }
  [8]=>
  array(2) {
    ["role_name"]=>
    string(5) "Owner"
    ["perm_name"]=>
    string(12) "view project"
  }
  [9]=>
  array(2) {
    ["role_name"]=>
    string(5) "Admin"
    ["perm_name"]=>
    string(12) "edit project"
  }
  [10]=>
  array(2) {
    ["role_name"]=>
    string(6) "Editor"
    ["perm_name"]=>
    string(14) "create project"
  }
}

What I am trying to do is select all user_roles assigned to a specific user_id, then get the permission ids assigned to that role from roles_permissions, then get the names of each permission from the permissions table. I would like to group by user_roles.name

so the resulting array would be

    array(3) {
  ["Owner"]=>
  array(3) {
    ["perm_name"]=>
    string(12) "view project"
    ["perm_name"]=>
    string(12) "create project"
    ["perm_name"]=>
    string(12) "edit project"
  }
  ["Editor"]=>
  array(2) {
    ["perm_name"]=>
    string(12) "view project"
    ["perm_name"]=>
    string(12) "edit project"
  }
   ["Admin"]=>
  array(3) {
    ["perm_name"]=>
    string(12) "view project"
    ["perm_name"]=>
    string(12) "create project"
    ["perm_name"]=>
    string(12) "edit project"
  }

}

So if anyone can help that would be great, also looking to learn from this so if you could explain it for me that would be awesome.

Thanks

SQL FIDDLE : http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/a7954/1

Answer 1

This won’t directly solve your problem, but your schema has a number of issues. Chief among them is that the tuple (role_id, permission_id) in roles_permissions isn’t unique. Here’s how I’d restructure things:

role
==========
id  -- autoincrement
name  -- varchar

user_role
===========
role_id  -- fk to role.id
user_id  -- fk to user.id (not listed here, but you obviously have one)

permission
===========
id  -- autoincrement
name  -- varchar

role_permission
===================
role_id  -- fk to role.id
permission_id  -- fk to permission.id

(note that if you’re attempting to do permission groups or role hierarchies this gets more complicated)

The modified example fiddle showing the setup, with sample data.