MySQL (or PHP?) group results by fields data

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MySQL (or PHP?) group results by field data

Guys, I have a database (mysql) similar to this now:

ID    meta_key  meta_value   name

1       _group     1          John
2       _group     1          Andrea
3       _group     1          Jack
4       _group     2          Mike
5       _group     2          Kurt
6       _group     3          Alice

and I need to sort / display it like this:

group       name
-----------------------
  1         John
            Andrea
            Jack
-----------------------
  2         Mike
            Kurt
-----------------------
  3         Alice
-----------------------

I had a similar issue before, thanks for the previus help! But now i'm stucked with this.

I really appreciate your help.

Answer 1

The display portion you could do with PHP:

$display = "Group\tName";
$old_group = "";
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
     if ($row['meta_value'] != $old_group) {
         $old_group = $row['meta_value'];
         $display .= "----------------------------\n" . $row['group'];
     }

     $display .= "\t" . $row['name'] . "\n";
}

echo "<pre>" . $display . "</pre>";

Untested, but pending any minor errors should display it how you want.

Answer 2

If you mean whether to group in your mysql query or later using PHP? Then do with Mysql, that would remove your headache to write PHP code to group and sort again. In case, you need to add more sortable columns later, mysql sorting will very easily do that whereas more logic may be needed for doing with PHP