dynamic selection of content - ermm... help!

[stuart.cole]

Hi

I am building a news delivery site - with the news being delivered in 3 areas. The first should have the latest news item, the second area the second most recent item, and the third area, latest stories 3-7.

How can I get PHP to select the last item, next to last, and then 3-7 since the ID's of these items will change as new items are added all the time?

I know there is probably a very simple answer to this - but I've not found one yet :(

[HuggieBear]

Use the ORDER BY syntax in MySQL to get the stories ordered by date, and use the LIMIT syntax to restrict the number of requested rows.

You can find a link to the MySQL manual in my signature.

Regards
Huggie

[shiny_spoon]

Like so:

Area 1: Latest
[code]<?php
$query = 'SELECT * FROM "news" ORDER BY "date" DESC LIMIT 0,1';
?>[/code]

Area 2: 2nd Latest
[code]<?php
$query = 'SELECT * FROM "news" ORDER BY "date" DESC LIMIT 1,1';
?>[/code]

Area 3: Results 3 to 7
[code]<?php
$query = 'SELECT * FROM "news" ORDER BY "date" DESC LIMIT 2,5';
?>[/code]

...replacing [code=php:0]'news'[/code] and [code=php:0]'date'[/code] with whatever your columns are named. You might also want to read the suggested documentation to know how everything works. :)

[stuart.cole]

Thanks both. It was the limit numbers that were confusing me - the rest was done but with your plain example I can see how that works now. Much appreciated.