Re: NEWBIE: Can't Get My Loop Going. . .

Jackson Linux wrote:

Hello all, I am a newbie trying to build a set of links to content in a db. I am connecting with the db and seeing the proper number of rows. if I echo out the values of $id and $sidebar I see that they take on the id# and text of the last entry in the database. I'm trying to make the script get each of the rows, until there are no more, and echo out the info I need for each row. Please can someone tell me where I'm going wrong? (the variables spelling out the db connection information are in a prepend file, and work.)

I read that you already figured it out... thought I add a couple of general tips:

Thanks in advance, Jack <?php

    $conn = mysql_connect($dbserver, $dbusername, $dbpassword);

if (!$conn) {

if you don't intend to use the $conn var why initialize it?: mysql_connect($dbserver, $dbusername, $dbpassword) or die("Unable to connect to DB: " . mysql_error());

echo "Unable to connect to DB: " . mysql_error(); exit; } if (!mysql_select_db("$dbname")) { echo "Unable to select mydbname: " . mysql_error(); exit; } $sql = " SELECT * FROM sidebar "; $sidebar = array(); $result = mysql_query($sql); if (!empty($result)) {

again if you are using $sql only in one place then there is no reason to not to do the following instead (given that the query itself is very short - i.e. legibility is not a problem): if ($result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM sidebar")) {

     while ($sidebar = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {

        $id = $sidebar['sidebar_id'];
        $linktext = $sidebar['headline'];

sometimes it handy to initialize vars like the 2 above for readability... in this case you may consider that the expressions are very short and therefore you might want to skip creating the vars: $left_sidebar[] = "<li class='menu-item'>- <a class='sidebar-link' href='{$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']}?s={$sidebar['sidebar_id']}' title=\"{$sidebar['headline']}\">{$sidebar['headline']}</a></li>";

/* Build sidebar.*/

    $left_sidebar[] = "<li class='menu-item'>- <a class='sidebar-link' href='{$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']}?s={$id}' title=\"{$linktext}\">{$linktext}</a></li>";

    }

} else {}

the preceding empty else statement if not required you can leave out the 'else {}' completely. have fun. :-)

mysql_free_result($result); ?> <html><body> <ul><?php join("\n\n", $left_sidebar); ?></ul> </body></html>