array in query

[1internet]

I want to list results that belong to a certain category. However, I have multiple categories and some results can belong to more than one cateogry.

I want to a query that will show all the results from several categories, the number of categories will be aribitrary though.

So I will have the categories contained within an array e.g.

$cat_ids = array(12,26,32)

And I want the query to be

$sql = "SELECT * FROM `categories` WHERE `cat_id`=12 OR `cat_id`=26 OR `cat_id`=32";

Of course sometimes there may only be 1 category, and sometimes there could be 5. So how do you execute the array in the query?

Or do I have to run a foreach loop?

$sql = "SELECT * FROM `categories` WHERE"
$i = 0;
foreach ($cat_ids AS $cat_id){
 if($i!=0) $sql = "OR "
  $sql = "`cat_id`=$cat_id"
 $i++
}

[mac_gyver]

mysql has an IN() comparison operator -

$cat_ids = array(12,26,32);

$ids = implode(',',$cat_ids);
$sql = "SELECT * FROM `categories` WHERE `cat_id` IN($ids)";

[1internet]

Ah, thats what I thought! Thanks