Re: grabbing from multiple tables

@David, Thanks for your reply. The idea was based off the WebAssist E-Commerce Database file they gave out a while ago. So, I did not set up the database file necessarily, just adopted and modified. This is how they had it set up. Not that I have to keep that structure necessarily, but I did design around it. This is my first complete back-end project. Please excuse my noobness. :) Basically, I have a product that gets read from the product table and from that I want it to read the product options table to retrieve the options for that product. The options and option groups table are set up so that I can modify options that span across multiple products without going into each product. The values inside the product options table will be based on values from the options and option groups tables. So this is where my head is not grasping. How to link the info. I already have it all set up this way and would like to see it work. Later down the road, I may streamline everything, but I am in a situation where I need to get something up, so reinventing the wheel is not what I want to do. I hope I am not doing that. :) Thanks for your help. Karl On Apr 30, 2010, at 2:59 PM, David Murphy wrote:

-----Original Message----- From: Karl DeSaulniers [mailto:karl@designdrumm.com] Sent: Friday, April 30, 2010 1:50 PM To: php-db@lists.php.net Subject: Re: [PHP-DB] grabbing from multiple tables No, please confuse me. I need to know this stuff. @Peter thanks for that introduction to foreign keys. Since my productoptions table is based off of items in products, optionGroups and options, would I use foreign keys for this? @DZvonko Thanks for trying to protect me, but I am a big boy. :) Do you have an example of how this JOIN works? Since my productoptions table is based off of items in products, optionGroups and options, would I use JOIN for this? And how? I am looking for the quickest and easiest obviously, but not against learning the longer and harder. I just really wanted to know how to use the foreign key in a real situation. If JOIN is a more viable solution, I'm all ears. Any examples or tutorials someone can send me? Thanks, Karl On Apr 30, 2010, at 6:41 AM, DZvonko Nikolov wrote:

Hi, don't confuse the guy. Just use JOIN clause and you will be fine. Check for the right syntax and don't complicate more. He said he is quite new, so discuss about foreign keys will only confuse him. Use JOIN and pure SQL and you will be fine. Cheers DZvonko --- On Fri, 4/30/10, Peter Lind <peter.e.lind@gmail.com> wrote: From: Peter Lind <peter.e.lind@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [PHP-DB] grabbing from multiple tables To: "Karl DeSaulniers" <karl@designdrumm.com> Cc: "php-db@lists.php.net" <php-db@lists.php.net> Date: Friday, April 30, 2010, 12:31 PM On 30 April 2010 12:26, Karl DeSaulniers <karl@designdrumm.com> wrote:

Thanks Peter. So what is the logic behind foreign keys? Why use them?

Constraints. When using, for example, the InnoDB engine in MySQL, you can set foreign key fields on tables. These ensure that your record will always be bound to a proper record in the connected table - so, for instance, you won't find yourself in the situation that you have deleted a record from table1 but table2 still references the table1 record. Also, they're very useful for tying models together automatically, as you can deduce relationships between models by foreign keys, for instance (this is simplified but covers a lot of cases). Regards Peter --<hype> WWW: http://plphp.dk / http://plind.dk LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/plind Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fake51 BeWelcome: Fake51 Couchsurfing: Fake51 </hype> --PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php

Karl DeSaulniers Design Drumm http://designdrumm.com Karl I am finding it hard to grasp why you are doing things this way why not have A products table with enums for size/color? Then on the edit page, you can read the product tables schema to get the enum options and explode them in PHP... Aka $tData=$db->QuerryToArray("desc products"); $tSizes = explode(",",$tData['Sizes']); $tColors = explode(",",$tData['Colors']); $objSmarty->assign("AvailableColors",$tColors); $objSmarty->assign("AvailableSizes",$tSizes); .... Then in the post system... $ProductSettings=$db-QueryToArray("select * from products where id='{$this->CurrentProductID}'"); $NewProductSettings=$this->GetProductEditInputs(); Foreach ($NewProductSettings as $Setting=>$Value) If($ProdcutSettings[$Setting] !== $Value) $tUpdates[$Setting]=$Value; Return ($db->UpdateFromArray("products",$tUpdates,"id='{$this-CurrentProductID}'") )? TRUE : FALSE; Since the table would be using an ENUM or SET the column size is very small but also very granular. I think breaking the tables apart is actually more complicated than its worth for your needs.

Karl DeSaulniers Design Drumm http://designdrumm.com