<ul> in a database

[erme]

Hi, how can I add a 'list' in an SQL database without having to creat lots of individual fields.

 

Many thanks

[tomdchi]

I don't think mysql is right for something like that.  How could you have a relational database and be able to query against it if it just contains a big list?

[Mchl]

Just what exactly you want to do?

[kickstart]

Hi

 

While I am not a fan of completely splitting the processing and the display of data (they are too related to do it totally), it does appear that you want just use a table field in much the same way you would use a flat file.

 

If you have a table containing rows which you want to display on screen as a list then you could use GROUP_CONCAT in your SQL. However most of the time it would probably be more flexible and maintainable to do the formatting within php.

 

All the best

 

Keith

[erme]

I think i've not explained myself. I dont want to put any 'code' within the database itself. Ideally I'd wanted to put something like this in a field:

 

List Item 1, List Item 2, List Item 3

 

And then I can format it in the PHP to read as a list

 

• List Item 1
  
• List Item 2
  
• List Item 3
  

 

There must be a way of doing this, or something similar to this? Or do I have to create hundreds of fields in the table for each List Item?

[kickstart]

Hi

 

Normally depending on the data I would expect the table to contain one row for each of those items. ie, it the list items were children for a parent then there would be one row per child.

 

If you did this then you could either bring back the rows in MySQL and use php to output the <li></li> tags, or you you use GROUP_CONCAT in MySQL to bring them back from the database with most of the tags in place.

 

Having a comma seperated field within a table makes it very difficult to do joins on the data to other tables.

 

All the best

 

Keith