Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you have something like this:
123 Joe
124 Joe
125 Sue
126 John
127 Joe
128 Frank
129 Sue
And you want to output something like:
Joe 123, 124, 127
Sue 125, 129
John 126
Frank 128
But what you're getting is:
Joe 123
Joe 124
..etc
You have two ways you can solve this:
1. Do two SQL queries:
SELECT DISTINCT cus_name FROM customers
while ($result) { // forgive the pseudo-code
SELECT cus_id FROM customers WHERE cus_name = $result['cus_name']
while ($result2) {
echo $output;
}
}
Or..
2. Collect data into an array and process 'distinctness' on output
SELECT cus_name, cus_id FROM customers
while ($result) {
$cus_arr[$cus_name][] = $cus_id;
}
foreach ($cus_arr as $cus_name => $cus_idarr) {
echo "$cus_name as ids:" . implode(", ", $cusidarr) . "<br>\n";
}
There may be some tricky ways in SQL to get the data the way you want it, but ultimately it's not worth the bending over backwards for (do I remember right that you can do it with crosstab queries? don't even know if MySQL will do those properly). Easier just to do it with one of the methods above.
Good luck!
-TG
= = = Original message = = =
I want select distinct field and return value of that field, but I have
problem which is: select distinct returns duplicate value. eg, I wan select
distinct customer name and id from the customer table. one customer may have
different cus_ids since cus_ids are auto increment and depend on the
purchased items. so what I want is to select distinct customer name so that
I can print customer name and customer id once.
here is algorithm;
select distinct cus_name, cus_id from customers order by cus_name asc
While row is not empty do
echo"<a href=\"page?cus=cus_id\">costomer name</a><br />";
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