Getting all of the fields using SQL Join

Question

So Here is my problem. I have multiple tables that I need to pull data from.

A Project table

Project id project name etc

Project Needs table

need id need

Need to projects table

project id need id

volunteer table (aka members)

all the member data

member_skills table

member_id skill_id (aka need for projects)

here is my query:

$query = "INSERT INTO PROJECT_NOTIFY_TEMP (project_id, project_name, volunteer_name, volunteer_email, volunteer_skills)
SELECT p.project_id as PROJECT_ID, p.project_name as PROJECT_NAME, CONCAT(m.first_name,' ',m.last_name) as FULL_NAME, m.email as EMAIL, GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT pn.need ORDER BY pn.need SEPARATOR ', ') as NEED
FROM PROJECTS p
JOIN project_needs_to_projects pntp
ON (pntp.project_id = p.PROJECT_ID)
JOIN project_needs pn
ON (pntp.need_id = pn.need_id AND pn.active = 'Y')
JOIN member_skills ms
ON (pn.need_id = ms.skill_id)
JOIN members m
ON (ms.member_id = m.member_id)
WHERE p.PROJECT_ID = '".$PROJECT_ID."' 
GROUP BY m.member_id";

It pulls all of the information correctly, but I have been unable to figure out how to pull all of the project needs. Right now it only pulls the needs that I have a volunteer match for. Basically, I want to pull those (as skills) and pull the project needs (as needs)

Answer 1

It's hard to answer without some sample data and expected output.

This can happen if all values of project_needs are not in project_needs_to_projects table. As you are using JOIN , it trys to return records with matching values in both tables on left and right side of the JOIN .

Using RIGHT JOIN for project_needs instead of JOIN will return all values from project_needs and matching values + null values from project_needs_to_projects table. You query will look like

SELECT p.project_id as PROJECT_ID, p.project_name as PROJECT_NAME,
CONCAT(m.first_name,' ',m.last_name) as FULL_NAME, m.email as EMAIL,
GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT pn.need ORDER BY pn.need SEPARATOR ', ') as NEED
FROM PROJECTS p
    JOIN project_needs_to_projects pntp
    ON (pntp.project_id = p.PROJECT_ID)
    RIGHT JOIN project_needs pn
    ON (pntp.need_id = pn.need_id AND pn.active = 'Y')...