Re: Checkboxes From Intersection Redux

Hopefully I understand your question correctly. You have this SQL: $media_query = 'SELECT media_id,media_name FROM media GROUP BY media_name'; And "For every media_id which is associated with $cartoon in the table media_art, check the box; for all others leave them unchecked." The problem is, the SQL you have is not returning every media_id (because you're grouping on media_name). I wonder if you truly need to group on media_name. I would assume that media_name is unique in the media table. If it is not, then you need to rethink your table structure. If you group on media_name and there are duplicate media_names, you can have data like this:

media_id         media_name
4                Name1
16               Name1

Grouping by media_name as in your query above will produce a line like:

media_id        media_name
4               Name1

You then output this to check boxes and use those to set the relation to art and media. But what's the difference between media_id 4 and media_id 16? In this case, if the database always returns the group by this way, you would never set the media_id 16. If there is a distinct difference between media_names with different ids, then I think you probably need to make some changes. That being said, if you do not need to group by media_name, then you can simply do something like this: select media.media_id, media.media_name, media_art.art_id, from media left join media_art on media_art.media_id=media.media_id and media_art.art_id=$cartoon['art_id'] Which would return a table like this if $cartoon['art_id']=15:

media_id            media_name         art_id
4                   Name1              NULL
8                   Name2              15
12                  Name3              NULL
16                  Name4              15
17                  Name5              NULL
18                  Name6              NULL

You could then test the output of art_id: $checkbox_media[] = "<input type='checkbox' name='media_types[]' value='{$media_rows['media_id']}' ".(rows['art_id']==$cartoon['art_id']?" checked":"")."/>{$media_rows['media_name']} "; HTH kgt Jack Jackson wrote:

Hi, With your help I got some checkboxes generated the other day for a form. I would like some help getting a similar problem solved. I am now making a form to edit db entries made in the previous form. I have three tables involved: art, media and media_art. I need to show checkboxes for all available media. For the chosen record ($cartoon, which equals an art_id selected by the user) I must also go into the media_art table, and where the selected art ID has a corresponding media_id, display that media_id's media_name as a checked box. TABLE media: media_id media_name

   1           ink
   2           pencil
   3           watercolor
   4           gauche
   5           watercolor pencil

To find out the art_id of the chosen record, the user is selecting from a dropdown box in the form. I'm doing queries like this to make a publisher dropdown in a similar vein: $query = "SELECT * FROM art WHERE art.art_id = '$cartoon'"; $publisher_query = 'SELECT * FROM publisher';

    $result = mysql_query($query);

$publisher_result = mysql_query($publisher_query); while ($rows = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){ $publisher_dropdown = '<select name="publisher_id">';

    while ($pub = mysql_fetch_assoc($publisher_result)){
    $publisher_dropdown .= '<option value="' . $pub['publisher_id'];
        if ($pub['publisher_id'] == $rows['publisher_id']){
            $publisher_dropdown .= '"  selected ';
        }

$publisher_dropdown .= '">' . htmlentities($pub['publisher_name']);

     }

$publisher_dropdown .= '</select>'; } I now need to formulate how to make the checkboxes similarly. The original setup to make the checkboxes was : $media_query = 'SELECT media_id,media_name FROM media GROUP BY media_name'; $media_result = mysql_query($media_query); $checkbox_media = array (); $media_types = array();

    while ($media_rows = mysql_fetch_assoc($media_result)){
        $checkbox_media[] = "<input type='checkbox' name='media_types[]' value='{$media_rows['media_id']}' />{$media_rows['media_name']}  ";
    }

Those which were checked were inserted into media_art thusly:

media_id     art_id
  3            1
  4            1
  5            1

What I want to do is say "For every media_id which is associated with $cartoon in the table media_art, check the box; for all others leave them unchecked. How can I do this? Thanks very much in advance, Jack