jameson9 Posted February 28, 2007 Share Posted February 28, 2007 Hey guys, I am new here and new to both PHP and MYSQL so please bear with me. I have a table in my db set up for a quiz and answers and want to compare the parsed query string against the answers in the table, then total them. The table has a field for the quiz id# and then 20 separate fields each containing an integer between 1-4 corresponding to the correct answer on the multiple choice quiz. I want to assign a value of 5 for each field so that the sum total = 100. When a query string is passed, I want to compare the string against the answers in the table, and whichever ones are equal to the values in the table, total them up to get a percentage score. Any ideas as to how to do this as simply as possible? Am I going the wrong way about it altogether? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
btherl Posted March 1, 2007 Share Posted March 1, 2007 How about this structure? quiz_id question answer 1 1 3 1 2 4 1 3 1 It'll be easier to work with than having one column for each question. In general, using columns for 20 things which are only distinguished by number is a bad idea. It's better to put them in rows, and put the distinguishing number in a single column. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fenway Posted March 1, 2007 Share Posted March 1, 2007 Agreed -- you may want to read the database normalization sticky that addresses this issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jameson9 Posted March 1, 2007 Author Share Posted March 1, 2007 Ok, thanks for the advice guys. I knew it looked a bit stupid when I set up the table but seemed like a good idea at the time! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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