cparekh

Hello all, I was recently introduced to data shaping as a way to manage record-sets and wondered if it can be done in PHP? My google search only brought up this thread at phpbuilder - http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?t=66995 - from way back in 2000, but not much else. Anyone have any experience or knowledge of SHAPE using PHP? Thanks in advance, C.

My worry is that because I have 8 levels I'll end up with a few hundred conditional statements for all the combinations/permutations possible I've just tried writing a statement for each and although I haven't yet met each combination I have over 60 conditional statements - too many to manage effectively I feel. Is there an easier way to iterate through so many possibilities?

Hi, I'm having trouble scaling a script I wrote a while back... background: The script is like a search-able address book. There are 8 access levels and the user can have permission access to a combination of any/all levels. The results returned are based on the access level combination as a sql query is created based on that access level combination i.e. a user can only see other users at their level. There used to be only 3 levels and so I had a block of conditional statements to generate the required sql query. However with 8 levels there would be too many statements to maintain and errors are very likely. I can only think that the best way to do this is to use a multi-dimensional array (?) but I have no idea how to set it up and then traverse it to get the relevant values out to use (I don't have much experience with multi-dimensional arrays). This is what the current code is: //Create the sql conditions for each access level if ($access1 == 'yes') { $sql1 = "usertype= 'Principal' or usertype = 'Principal Assistant' or usertype = 'Named' or usertype = 'E-mail' or usertype = 'Web' "; } if ($access2 == 'yes') { $sql2 = "usertype = 'Principal' or usertype = 'Deputy Principal' or usertype = 'Contact'"; } if ($access3 == 'yes') { $sql3 = "usertype = 'Principal' or usertype = 'Contact' "; } //join them if (($access1 == 'yes') and ($access2 == 'yes') and ($access3 == 'yes')) //all 3 { $sqlconditions = $sql1." or ".$sql2." or ".$sql3; } elseif (($access1 == 'yes') and ($access2 == 'yes') and ($access3 == 'no')) { $sqlconditions = $sql1." or ".$sql2; } elseif (($access1 == 'yes') and ($access2 == 'no') and ($access3 == 'no')) { $sqlconditions = $sql1; } elseif (($access1 == 'no') and ($access2 == 'yes') and ($access3 == 'yes')) { $sqlconditions = $sql2." or ".$sql3; } elseif (($access1 == 'no') and ($access2 == 'yes') and ($access3 == 'no')) { $sqlconditions = $sql2; } elseif (($access1 == 'no') and ($access2 == 'no') and ($access3 == 'yes')) { $sqlconditions = $sql3; } elseif (($access1 == 'yes') and ($access2 == 'no') and ($access3 == 'yes')) { $sqlconditions = $sql1." or ".$sql3; } $sqlconditions is passed into the main sql query as a condition. For each access level we have different user types i.e. 'Principal', 'Contact' etc. (btw, none of user access values or types are held in a local db - they are written into the session when a user logs in after the db of a third party crm is interrogated ) Any help or direction is greatly appreciated. Thanks, C.

Hi fenway, yes, this is exactly what I needed. Many thanks, C.

Hi, I have a table where I'm storing events and each event can belong to multiple categories so I'm storing the category ids in a field called 'catid' as a comma-separated string e.g. '1,3' where each number corresponds to a category id. Now, I know what I'm about to ask can be achieved in a different, better way however I'm working with someone else's code and a change would require re-coding parts of the whole application. I'm hoping I can do this without having to make those changes. So, what I'd like to do is get all the events for a particular category and limit the rows returned to, let's say, 10. What's happening currently is that the following query is run and then using explode and a foreach on the result-set I'm pulling out the correct events for the category I want. However using this method I can't limit the number of events to show as on the query I have to get all the events in the database. I'd like to know if there is a way to write the query and apply the LIMIT on the query so that only 10 rows are ever pulled out, all correct for a particular category id. The current query: SELECT * created FROM events ORDER BY date DESC Pseudo query of what I hope is possible: SELECT * created FROM events WHERE (subquery or conditioning) ORDER BY date DESC LIMIT 10 where the subquery would play the role of explode, split the string on a comma and check for a particular category id (e.g. 3) and only return the 10 rows for any records that have a '3' in the catid column. I really hope that makes sense!! Any help or guidance is greatly appreciated. Thanks, C. MySQL version: 4.1.22

Hi, firstly, thanks for responding. I should explain this further - I'm implementing Google Mini search on our site and would like to display the results within the site but not in an iframe as is the popular option. I'm using simplexml to parse the xml and output it e.g. $xml = simplexml_load_file($xmlfile); //to get the total number of results $total = $xml->RES->M; return $total; I'm able to style the output as suggested however what I'm missing here is a way to apply the google xslt which contains all the spiffy 'extra' bits like 'related searches' etc. So really my question should have been how would I apply an external xslt to the output? (My apologies, it's only after looking into it further today that I realise what I'm trying to do - total xml dunce) Any guidance is appreciated. C.

Hi all, I'm using php/simplexml to pull some xml and I'm having trouble styling it - essentially I'm not sure what to do. I've read up on xslt but it seems the call to a xsl document needs to be made from within the feed but what I have is just html from simplexml. How would I apply styling? This is really something I know very little about so any help or guidance is greatly appreciated. Thanks, C.

Yep, that works great! I changed it a tad to suit my needs but that did it. Thanks very much, C.

Hi, I'm trying to compare two arrays to qualify records from a dataset to display and although the comparison work fine I end up displaying the same record multiple each time the array comparison is true. To explain better here is the scenario: I have one table of articles and another table of user-profiles. I'm trying to show a user articles based on their profile setting so for example I'm using geographic location of the user where their location is held in the 'locations' column as a string e.g. '1,2' where 1 and 2 relate to different locations. Likewise in the user profile I have a location column to specify what locations they'd like to be able to view articles for. I'm pulling each of these out as an array and comparing them for a match but only want to display a record once, even if it matches multiple times. How do I break out of the loop and more importantly which loop do I break out of? Here's the code: <?php $k = 0; foreach($article_rows as $article_row) { //get the location info for each article $locations_a = explode(',', $article_row->locations); //for each location id for an article, compare against profile $i=0; foreach ($locations_a as $a) //from article { $j=0; foreach ($locations_p as $p) //from profile { if($a == $p) { ?> <li ><?php echo $article_row->title; ?></li> <?php } $j++; } $i++; } $k++; ?> Any help or guidance is greatly appreciated. Thanks, C.

Ahhh yes, ok I see what you mean. So the query would use a table join and we're able to query against each article and category using the '=' operator for an exact match? Right, thanks very much, that makes a lot more sense to me. Thanks again, C.

Hi Thorpe, thanks for the link - I checked out the normalization chapter and I could be wrong but isn't that how I've structured my database? I have 2 tables one for the Articles and another for the Categories and instead of storing the titles of each category in the Articles table I'm storing the item ID. However, the issue is that I need to run a comparison, in the sql query, which doesn't trip up like 'LIKE' does as a string '1' matches a string '3,11' whereas I need to use an operator that matches exactly so that e.g. '1' would return true against '1,3,5' but false against '3,5,11'. I'm not sure what MySQL comparison operator would do this? Thanks again, C.

Hi, I'm struggling with what must be a simple query but I can't crack it. Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction. The scenario: I have 2 tables, 'articles' and 'categories'. Each article can have multiple categories so e.g. I'm writing to the category column for an article the string "5,11" where the article belongs to 2 categories, 5 and 11 (these being the item ids in the categories table). The query I'm writing wants to take into account a user's category profile e.g. User1 can view articles in category 1 and 5 but not 11. How would I structure the condition of the query when a user views the articles listing? I tried LIKE and as expected it returned the articles with category 11 as it successfully matched "1 LIKE 11". What's a good condition to use or am I writing the category IDs the wrong way i.e. as a string like '5,11'? Hope this makes sense. Any help or direction is much appreciated. Thanks, C.

Lol, boy do I feel daft!! thanx all! C.

Hi, this is probably an easy one but my mind is mush so I thought I'd ask here...hopefully someone can point me in the right direction.. I have a simple array and I want to join all the values into a single string. I'm writing a dynamic conditional statement for a sql query; The array is created based on certain criteria being met and then a single condition being created to insert into the sql query. What I have so far: $querybuild[] = "condition1"; $querybuild[] = "condition2"; $querybuild[] = "condition3"; etc.. //add the OR operator between array members for($i = 0, $size = sizeof($querybuild); $i < $size - 1; ++$i) { $querybuild[$i] = $querybuild[$i]. " OR "; } and now I'd like to join whatever the array holds into a single string to use in the sql query thus: $sql = "SELECT * FROM table WHERE ".$querybuild." ORDER BY id DESC"; where $querybuild would read "condition1 OR condition2 OR condition3". Hope that makes sense Thanks in advance for any help. C.