Re: Thinking out loud - a continuation...

[snip] ...stuff... [/snip] Here is the explanation for what I have done and what I am trying to do - (based on the customer's request). A week or so ago I took a set of queries from one table and made them into an unordered list. This will be pseudo-code so that you get idea. SELECT DISTINCT column1 FROM table WHERE company = '1' while($column1 = mysql_fetch_array($query1results)){

    SELECT DISTINCT column2 FROM table
    WHERE company = '1'
    AND column1 = $column1[0]

    while($column2 = mysql_fetch_array($query2results)){
        SELECT DISTINCT column3 FROM table
        WHERE company = '1'
        AND column2 = $column2[0]
    }

} This continues for up to 14 columns of data. I'm not worried about the recursive data retrieval, I have that part and like I said - I can output a nested unordered list from it quite handily. Now the customer wants JSON as the output. The JSON must reflect the children properly. So I have two choices, a multidimensional array that I can use json_encode() on or output a string that ultimately forms the JSON. We have all agreed that doing an array would be the best thing but I cannot wrap my head around it. If you have more questions fire away - I'd love to get this solved and off of my plate.