Multidimensional array PHP from MYSQL query

Question

I have the following tables in MYSQL:

CommentTable with columns: comment, commenter, datecommented and postid PostTable with columns: postid, dateposted

I perform this query in php

Select commentTable.comment, commentTable.commenter, commentTable.datecommented, shareTable.postid, shareTable.dateshared  from shareTable Left Join commentTable on commentTable.postid = shareTable.postid where shareTable.postid IN ($postidarray) order by  shareTable.dateshared desc

where $postid array is an array of post ids.

The problem I have is when i'm trying to sort the query result into a multidimensional array.

I would want to have a multidimensional array called comment which would like this

Comment{

[0] {
       [0] => "Comment 1 from first key in $postidaray"
       [1] =>  "Comment 2 from first key in $postidarray"
    }

[1] {
       [0] => "Comment 1 from second key in $postidarray"
     } // assuming there is only one comment for the second key in $postidarray

[2]{

       [0] => "Comment 1 from third key in $postidarray"
       [1] =>  "Comment 2 from third key in $postidarray"
       [2] =>  "Comment 3 from third key in $postidarray"
       [3] =>  "Comment 4 from third key in $postidarray"
   } 
   // assuming there are 4 comments for the third key in $postidarray
    }
}

I'm doing this so that when I make a php echo I can loop out the comments relating to the specific post

For instance comment[0][1] would echo 'Comment 2 from first key in $postidarray'

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

You could do an ORDER BY shareTable.postId THEN BY shareTable.dateshared DESC

This would make all the rows with the same postId appear together so you could just check for a change of postId.

$i=-1;
$currentPostId=0;

$comment = array();
 while($assoc = mysql_fetch_assoc($res)){
     if($assoc['postId']!=$currentPostId){
              $currentPostId = $assoc['postId'];
              $i++;
     }
  $comment[$i][] = $res;
}

This should give you the result you want. Alternately, If you use PDO, Use a prepared statement instead of using a single query with IN( ... )

$stmt = $pdo->prepare("Select ... shareTable.postid=? order by ShareTable.dateshared desc");
 $comment = array();
$p = &$postIds[0];
$stmt->bindParam($p);
 foreach($postIds as $p){
      $stmt->execute();
      $comment[] = $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
 }