MySQL + PHP question

Hi guys. I'm having some trouble here regarding a project. I have a table with projects, wich can be recursive (ie. sub-projects) and it is related to itself. By making the following query ---------------------8<-------------------------- SELECT * FROM projects LEFT JOIN projects proj_parent ON projects.project_parent = proj_parent.parent_id WHERE project_id = 1234 ---------------------8<-------------------------- i need to be able to access to the parent project's fields, but I have a slight problem here. First off, I have to make the LEFT JOIN. I don't know if the project can be parent (therefore not finding a project_id = 0 wouldn't show the row) and I need to add some kind of prefix to the proj_parent's fields so that I can access them (or that they can't overwrite the project i'm getting info on. Well... there is an obvious sollution here: use an associative array instead of an object, and access the properties by doing $array[0], $array[1], etc. By my experience, this is a nightmare, maintenence-wise, so I'd only use it as a _LAST_ resource. Does anyone have any experience with this? The answer should be pretty obvious, but I can't seem to figure it out :( Thanks in advance. André