store values seperated by commas

[biggieuk]

Hi all,

 

I have a dynamic box on the admin section of my website where the admin can set the number of selectable sessions from the booking form.

 

I do not want to have to add/remove columns in my 'sessions' table to reflect this number so im wondering if there is a way to store values in a database separated by commas and read them back individually?

 

This would allow me to store values one after another in a single field, e.g. t1,t4,t6,t7 . If there is a better method i could use please share your thoughts.

 

thanks

[LooieENG]

Store them as "t1,t4,t6,t7" and then when you retrieve the data,

 

<?php

$sess = explode(',', $row['sessions']);

?>

And then

<?php

echo $sess[0];

?>

 

Would return "t1"

[deadonarrival]

Put simply, yes

 

Store the values as val1,val2,val3

 

then retrieve the field as $field

$values = explode(",",$field);

 

In your example

t1,t4,t6,t7

would become

$values[0] = "t1";

$values[1] = "t4";

$values[2] = "t6";

$values[3] = "t7";

 

An alternative (probably preferable) would be to make a seperate table with the values and you can just read them straight  out of that table.

 

So you might end up with a table that looks something like this

tvalues

+----------+---------+

|userid      |value      |

+----------+---------+

|1            |t1          |

|1            |t4          |

|1            |t6          |

|1            |t7          |

|2            |t1          |

|2            |t4          |

|3            |t9          |

|3            |t3          |

+----------+---------+

 

And you can just use

SELECT * FROM `tvalues` WHERE `userid`='$userid'

to get the values for that user.

 

If it's only one for the whole site, you can just take out the userid completely, and remove the where clause from the sql

[biggieuk]

thanks for your help.

 

The explode method works great.