PHP:how to show specific row different from others in MySQL?

Question

I am creating a php chat application and I have two panels of this chat, 1 is admin area and other is client chat area and the content in both panel areas shows from 1 table called messages I want to show only admin content or name in different colour other than the client users.

how to do this? any idea?

here is my code from my display_messages.php

session_start();
require_once 'cn.php';
require_once 'protect.php';



$fiveMinutesAgo = time() - 1000;

$sql = "SELECT * FROM messages ORDER BY message_time  ";
$result = mysqli_query($cn,$sql) or
    die(mysqli_error($cn));



while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    $user = $row['username'];
    $msg_content = $row['message_content'];
    $hoursAndMinutes = $row['message_time'];

    echo '<p><cite class="fa fa-user"><b>'. $user .':</b></cite> <output>'. $msg_content .'</output> <time class="fa fa-clock-o time">: ' . $hoursAndMinutes . ':</time></p>';

}

any help would be appreciated.

thanks.

Answer 1

Supposing you had a column in the messages table called role which could be 'admin' or 'user' then your loop might look like:

while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    $user = $row['username'];
    $msg_content = $row['message_content'];
    $hoursAndMinutes = $row['message_time'];
    $class = $row['role'];

    echo '<p class="'.$class.'">'.
            '<cite class="fa fa-user">'.
              '<b>'. $user .':</b>'.
            '</cite>'.
            '<output>'. $msg_content .'</output>'.
            '<time class="fa fa-clock-o time">: ' . $hoursAndMinutes . ':</time>'.
           '</p>';

}

And you could add

.admin{color:red}
.user{color:black}

to your css

this is a broad example though. You really should join the messages table on the users table

Edit

Change your query to:

 $sql = "SELECT m.*,u.role FROM messages m ".
        "JOIN users u on u.username = m.username ORDER BY message_time";

and add a column to your users table with

  "ALTER TABLE `users` ADD `role` VARCHAR(5);"

in your sql client.

But this won't work very well if you have more than one user with the same name, the messages table should have a userid column, not a user name column and you should join on that.

Answer 2

So you have an username in the messages table that means that you maybe have an user table with all the users informations. If you dont have that YOU SHOULD.

session_start();
require_once 'cn.php';
require_once 'protect.php'

$fiveMinutesAgo = time() - 1000;

 $sql = "SELECT messages.username,message.message_content,messages.message_time,user.type as user_type FROM messages JOIN user on messages.username = user.username  ORDER BY message_time  ";
$result = mysqli_query($cn,$sql) or
die(mysqli_error($cn));



  while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
      $user = $row['username'];
      $msg_content = $row['message_content'];
      $hoursAndMinutes = $row['message_time'];
      $role = $row['role'] //the user role e.g admin, normal,etc.
      echo '<span class={$role}><p><cite class="fa fa-user"><b>'. $user .':</b></cite> <output>'. $msg_content .'</output> <time class="fa fa-clock-o time">: ' . $hoursAndMinutes . ':</time></p></span>';

 }

Now you need to create a CSS class for every role in your user database.

.admin{color:pink;} .normal{color:red;}

I hope this helps you.