Flipping data in a table using a MySQL query and posting to a PHP form

[general_paton99]

I am new to MySQL and PHP so please forgive me if this is a stupid questions.

How can I flip a tables data using a query?

Current table (actual table has more fields)

field_id  user_id  xdata
24        5          Bob
25        5          Villa
26        5          1970-06-12
24        6          Susan
25        6          Summers
26        6          1970-06-10

How can I get it to look like below using a query?  I can't change the actual table, because it's called on by a much bigger system.

user_id    24 AS first_name  25 AS last_name    26 AS birthday
5            Bob                    Villa                    1970-06-12
6            Susan                  Summers            1970-06-10

Once queried, I then need to get it into a form which an admin can edit and update the respective fields.

Thanks for any help!

[jcbarr]

Once you query the database you can display the contents of the query where ever you you want by simply echoing them at the right places. For example;

[code=php:0]
$query=mysql_query("SELECT field_id, user_id, xdata FROM table_name");
$data=mysql_fetch_assoc($query);

//you can then echo the values
echo $data['user_id'];
[/code]

Not sure exactly what you want to do with the information. But that is a simple way. Once you get the data from the table you can dump it into variables and display it however you want.