Simple DB / Array Question

[trichards]

I am building a simple shopping cart.  I store my purchased items in my orders table as comma separated values.  Ex. (1,1,2,2,2).  The number coincides with product ID and frequency determines the quantity of the product.  I am interested in understanding how I can use this information to display:

 

(#Total Quantity of Each Product) Product Name

Ex. (3) Product Name

 

Thank you in advance.

[siric]

Why would you know create a an entry in the table for each product code and store the amount ordered there?

 

 

 

 

[trichards]

I not sure what your asking...

 

I am trying to determine for each order what products we're purchased and how many.  Can this be done using my product id succession?  If not, how should I store the data in the database?

[siric]

Sorry, my question was jumbled.

 

What I was saying that instead of storing a string in the table with the numbed of item numbers indicating how many were ordered, just create a table as follows:

 

product_id, num_ordered

 

All you have to do then is to increment the num_ordered for each particular item when an order is placed.

 

To find out how many of an item were ordered, just to a query on that particular item number.

 

if you post your script and table structure, I can help you better.

[trichards]

That's actually great help.  I was definitely thinking about this backwards.  I can take it from here, thank you