Why do I have to query more than once?

[macoln]

Hi, first time posting! I have a MYSQL table of company information, and I want to output it to HTML, categorized with headings like "Association" and "Consultant". So I query my table putting * in $result, then say,

 

[pre]while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {

    if ($row['Type'] == "Association") {

        eval ($printdata);

    }

}[/pre]and then again for Type == "Contractor"

 

Now when I test it, all the Associations output fine, but Contractors are blank. In order to get both, I have to query my table again. But why is that necessary? What happens to $result?

[ignace]

First off:

 

ORDER BY Type

 

In your query. Then using PHP:

 

$type = '';
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    if ($type !== $row['Type']) {
        $type = $row['Type'];
        print "<h2>$type</h2>";
    }
    echo '<p>', $row['CompanyName'], '</p>';
}

 

This will give you something like:

 

Association
CompanyName1
CompanyName2
CompanyName3

Consultant
CompanyName4
CompanyName5
CompanyName6

Contractor
CompanyName7
CompanyName8
CompanyName9

[roopurt18]

ignace has the right idea; with his solution you'll only need to loop over the result-set once.

 

In any case, $result is a resource that represents the results of the query.  The resource contains an internal record pointer.  If you want to be inefficient and loop over your results multiple times, you can set the internal record pointer's position:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-data-seek.php