Singular Year Ordering from query, help!

Hi,

I have a query which returns a list of results from a database. One of the values in the Array is a 'Year' value. What I'm attempting to do is I want to order the array by the year and echo it client-side but I want values with the same year to be displayed under the year just once. Example:

2009

Value

Value

Value

with my current function(below) i'm getting. Example

2009

Value

2009

Value

2009

Value

function exhibition_sort($artists)
{
	if(!empty ($artists[0]['exhibitioname']))
	{
		for($i=0; $i< count($artists) ; $i++)
			{
				if($artists[$i]['Year'] < 2009)
					{
							echo "<p class=\"Year\">".$artists[$i]['Year']."</p><br/>\n";
						echo "<strong>".$artists[$i]['exhibitioname']."</strong><br/>\n";
						echo "<strong>Start Date:</strong> ".$artists[$i]['startdate']."<br/>\n";
						echo "<strong>End  Date:</strong> ".$artists[$i]['enddate']."<br/>\n";
						echo "<strong>End  Date:</strong> ".$artists[$i]['gallery']."<br/>\n";
						echo "<stong>Address:</strong>".$artists[$i]['Address']."</br>\n";
						echo "<br/>\n";
					}else
					{
							echo "<p class=\"Year\">".$artists[$i]['Year']."</p><br/>\n";
						echo "<strong>".$artists[$i]['exhibitioname']."</strong><br/>\n";
						echo "<strong>Start Date:</strong> ".$artists[$i]['startdate']."<br/>\n";
						echo "<strong>End  Date:</strong> ".$artists[$i]['enddate']."<br/>\n";
						echo "<strong>End  Date:</strong> ".$artists[$i]['gallery']."<br/>\n";
						echo "<stong>Address:</strong>".$artists[$i]['Address']."</br>\n";
						echo "<br/>\n";
					}
			}

	}else	
			{
				return false;
			}

}

How would I go about getting things working according to the first example?

Thanks!

There's a simple formula to follow for these kinds of outputs.

Have a holding value to remember the last value you are listing once (in this case the year)

Then before outputting the content for the value you want displaying once, make sure it doesn't equal the holding value.

If it doesn't then output the value and assign the value to the holding value. The next time you loop if the value equals the holding value it wont display it

$year = '';
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    if($row['year'] != $year) {
        echo '<h2>'.$year.'</h2>';
        $year = $row['year'];
    }
}

I've not integrated it into your code to give you a chance at doing it. It's not difficult even for a beginner so long as you understand the logic of it. Give it a try and see how you get on

Hey i gave this ago just now with some better results however,  I'm now only getting one result under each of the years and the year won't display less than 2008!

function find_exhibitions()
{

	$query = sprintf("SELECT * FROM EXHIBITIONS");
	$result = mysql_query($query);
	$year = '2009';

	while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
	{

		for($i=0; $i < count($row) ; $i++)

			if($row[$i]['Year'] < 2009) 
				{
				 echo '<h2>'.$year.'</h2>';
				 echo $row[$i]['exhibitioname'];
				 $year = $row[$i]['Year'];

				}else
				{
					return false;
				}
		}

	}

can you tell me what i'm doing wrong?

You've missed two fundamental points in my example above. Firstly the $year = '2009'; should have an empty value not 2009. Secondly, you don't test if $year != $row[$i]['Year']

Is is still correct to run a for loop though? I tried parsing the if condition as ($row['Year'] != $year) within the for loop (i don't know how else i can extract the different details for the unqiue arrays) but i get returned a undefined offset error.

Try this

function find_exhibitions() {

$query = sprintf("SELECT * FROM EXHIBITIONS ORDER BY `Year`");
$result = mysql_query($query);
$year = ''; #Set the year holder to nothing by default

//Loop through each row of data
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
	//Check if the last year output is the same
	if ($year != $row['Year']) {
            //Assign year to holding var
		$year = $row['Year'];
            //echo Year heading
		echo '<h2>'.$year.'</h2>';
	}
        //Echo exhibition details
	echo $row['exhibitionname'];
}
}

I've also ordered by year.

Hey Jay,

I really appreciate your help on this. I tried your version of the function and it works! I think I understand how it works too!

Really appreciate it again!

Cheers!

No problem