Question

This is my data

id          cost    cat         foreign     colours
--------------------------------------------------------   
385_white   99      swarovski   12          black;blue
386_white   99      swarovski   12          black;blue;green
387_white   99      swarovski   12          yellow;green
389_white   99      swarovski   12          white;silver
385_white   99      swarovski   12          silver

This is my query

$checkSQL=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `products`");
while($r = mysql_fetch_assoc($checkSQL)) {

    echo '<ul class="ColourList">';
    $cols = explode( ';', $r['colours'] );
    foreach ( $cols as $col ){
        echo '<li class="' . $col . '">' . $col . '</li>';
    }
    echo '</ul>';
}

This basically returns a list of colors for each record

<ul>
 <li>black</li>
 <li>blue</li>
</ul>

However I want to return a single list, for every color i the entire database and alphabetize it. So basically get all the colors, in all rows, split them in a list in ABC order but without them repeating – is this possible with my clients setup? Just need some direction? Thinking explode with replace and then us the ORDER BY ASC command?

Answer 1

This is a nice example of what happens if you not normalize your database. At first it seems easy, but ones runs into trouble later.

Change your tables like this:

Products:

id          cost    cat         foreign     
--------------------------------------------   
385_white   99      swarovski   12     

ProductColors:

id          color_id     
----------------------
385_white   1                
385_white   2

Colors:

id          name     
----------------------
1           Black     
2           Blue

If you have a structure like this, it is very easy ro query the database for what you want.

Example:

To query all available colors:

select * from colors

To query all available colors for 385_white:

select * from productcolors where id = '385_white'