Create Relationship Between All Elements in an Array SQL query.

Question

I've got an array of names:

 $names = array('ray'=>0,'bob'=>1,'sue'=>2,'jeff'=>3);

Then I have a table that stores relationships between each keyword in the array:

+----------+----------+
|  id_a    |   id_b   |
+----------+----------+
|   0      |    1     |
+----------+----------+
|   0      |    2     |
+----------+----------+
|   0      |    3     |
+----------+----------+
|   1      |    2     |
+----------+----------+
|   1      |    3     |
+----------+----------+
|   2      |    3     |
+----------+----------+

At the moment my function to store the relationships is:

    foreach($names as $name=>$id_a){
        foreach($names as $n2=>$id_b){
            if($name != $n2){
                INSERT INTO relationships (id_a,id_b) VALUES ($id_a,$id_b);
            }
        }
        array_shift($names);
    }

I'm wondering if there is a faster SQL solution to handle this type of action?

Answer 1

You can build the inserted values array first, then insert it all with a single query ; that'd be faster. The query would look like...

INSERT INTO relationships (id_a, id_b) VALUES (0, 1), (0, 2), (0, 3);