mysql select with multiple tables and flexible output

Question

Hi i got a mysql-select about three tables, where each tables have different fields. One may have the field "title", the other may not but have the field "location". Now i want to have a common output of these three tables, and each row is supposed to have a title. for tables, whoch have the field "title" in the output the title should come from field "title" but if the table hasnt "title" but has "location" the title in the output should come from field "location". In a regular while-loop it would look like this:

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
   $marker['###TITEL###'] = $row['title']; 
}

what i want now is to have like a "flexible" $row['flexible']. So if field "title" exists it should be $row['title'] if it doesnt, but "location, it should be $row['location'].

Does anyone have an idea how to solve this?

Regards, Maschek

Answer 1

That's how I would do it:

while (list($title, $location, $other) = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
    if (!empty($title)) {
       $row['title'] = $title;
    } else if (!empty($location)) {
       $row['title'] = $location;
    } else {
       $row['title'] = $other;
    }
}

Sorry if the syntax is not 100% correct. There's a long time that I don't code in php.

Also, the variable that I called $row would be the one that you called $marker in your question.

Answer 2

Use UNION to join the results from all tables, alias the field as flexible, then the result set will contain the flexible column.

SELECT title AS flexible, field2, field3 FROM a
UNION
SELECT location AS flexible, field2, field3 FROM b