Accessing an array component that has been calculated

[gomac]

Hello, first post. I\'m a bit of a cook-book coder, but I clean up well and generally smell nice. I\'m creating a small personal app for practice with PHP and MySQL and need to tug on some expert coatails.

 

I have a returned MySQL array which is displaying just dandy on a PHP page with a SELECT - one of the elements of that array is a calculated variable $total, which is the quotient of two db fields pulled with the SELECT ($total = $units * $value;). There is a $total in every row in the array produced in a WHILE loop.

 

Two questions:

1) Can someone tell me how I can access the $total values so that I can further add them up outside of the WHILE function? I can see them on the page, but am unclear how to target them and add them up outside of the above loop. A code example would be very helpful.

 

2) I can\'t seem to figure out how to format the above $total variable. Because it is created by muliplying two decimal format numbers, it returns numbers with multiple decimals - I only want .02, because it is a money figure. settype($total, \'integer\'); returns only integers, no decimals (duh)...settype($total, \'decimal (7,2)\'); doesn\'t work - but I do get three and four decimals...

 

Thanks for any help - hope I\'m not boring anyone with my brainlessness.

 

Gord

[shivabharat]

I am not quite clear with your 1st question

 

1.

select (absentdays + presntdays) as total from students

 

Now in the above query absentdays and presentdays are two fields in my table and I add them using the query.

 

So my code will be like this

 

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($sql))

{ 

echo $row[\'total\'];

}

 

The trick is I am using total as an alias name to the two colums that are added.

 

I hope I am clear.

 

2. You can use the round fucntion in PHP to do this

 

$a = round(1.967,2)

 

Will return 1.97

[Barand]

1. SELECT SUM(units * value) as grandtotal FROM tablename

 

2 echo number_format($total, 2);

 

hth