Getting Superfish jQuery plugin to work dynamically with several loops in PHP

Question

Hi there,

Hopefully some clever lad or ladette can help me figure out the logic for the follwoing code.

I have started to use superfish jquery plugin for my navigation and have got the code working fine and easily with static links, but when I try to change that to dynamic links I am having trouble getting the 2nd level tag to work properly; to only show when 2nd level links are found and then only show once before the 2nd level links are written out from the database.

I hope I have made myself clear with the problem. Appologies if I havn't.

<ul class="sf-menu">
        <?php
            // A varible that increments on every loop of the below "while" statement
            $count == 0;

            $result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM web_navbar_links WHERE link_parent='1' AND visible='1' ORDER BY position ASC");
            while ($row = mysql_fetch_object($result)) {
                $parentID    = $row->id;
                $parentLevel = $row->slug;
                // Increment the counter varible by one
                $count++;

                echo "<li";
                    switch ($parentLevel) {
                        case "business":
                            echo " id='business'";
                            break;

                        case "education":
                            echo " id='education'";
                            break;

                        case "consumer":
                            echo " id='consumer'";
                            break;
                    }
                    echo "><a>".ucwords(trim($row->link_name))."</a>";

                    $result2 = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM web_navbar_links WHERE link_child='1' AND parent_relationID='".$parentID."' AND visible='1' ORDER BY position ASC");
                    if ($row2 = mysql_fetch_object($result2)) {
                        echo "<ul>"; //PROBLEM LIES HERE!! ATM THE <UL> WRITES ONCE BUT THE LOOP ONLY READS BACK THE LAST ENTRY FROMT HE db.
                        while ($row2 = mysql_fetch_object($result2)) {
                            echo "<li><a href='http://". ROOT . ADMIN . SECTIONS . TEMPLATES . $row2->link_href."?".$row2->slug."=".$row2->slug."' title='".$row2->link_title."'>".$row2->link_name."</a>";
                                echo "<ul>";
                                    echo "<li><a href='#'>blah</a></li>";
                                echo "</ul>";
                            echo "</li>";
                        }
                        echo "</ul>";
                    }
                echo "</li>";

                if ($count < 3) {
                    echo "<li class='breaker'></li>";
                }
                else {
                    echo "";
                }
            }
        ?>
    </ul>

Answer 1

I think the problem lies with this line:

if ($row2 = mysql_fetch_object($result2)) {

This will move the record counter forwards, so the next time you call:

while ($row2 = mysql_fetch_object($result2)) {

$row2 will have been populated with the second row. Since you are not using the first row anywhere between the 2 highlighted lines, you will lose it.

I suggest calling mysql_num_rows($result2) to get the number of rows returned instead of the first mysql_fetch_object($result2) in the if statement.

                $result2 = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM web_navbar_links WHERE link_child='1' AND parent_relationID='".$parentID."' AND visible='1' ORDER BY position ASC");
                if (mysql_num_rows($result2) > 0) {
                    echo "<ul>"; //PROBLEM LIES HERE!! ATM THE <UL> WRITES ONCE BUT THE LOOP ONLY READS BACK THE LAST ENTRY FROMT HE db.
                    while ($row2 = mysql_fetch_object($result2)) {
                        echo "<li><a href='http://". ROOT . ADMIN . SECTIONS . TEMPLATES . $row2->link_href."?".$row2->slug."=".$row2->slug."' title='".$row2->link_title."'>".$row2->link_name."</a>";
                            echo "<ul>";
                                echo "<li><a href='#'>blah</a></li>";
                            echo "</ul>";
                        echo "</li>";
                    }
                    echo "</ul>";
                }