From: "Zac Hester" <n...@planetzac.net>
Newsgroups: alt.php,comp.lang.php
References: <JhnZ8.569709$cQ3.52707@sccrnsc01>
Subject: Re: Populating/Checking Checkbox Values Based on Lookup
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2002 18:44:33 -0600
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Jeff,

I do that all the time.  You're not going to find a simple solution.
There's no function that will map multiple arrays together in precisely the
way you want to do it.  The way I do it may not help out your particular
problem depending on what you want to accomplish in the user interface.  I
keep my PHP code pretty simple by loading all the data into objects in the
browser's JavaScript.  I create objects in JavaScript that use arrays whose
dimensions aren't important.  The big benefit of this system is that you can
then cycle through your primary item (USERS, in your case) with a select box
and populate a field of check boxes (corresponding to your secondary item:
COLORS) on the fly (without any trips to the server).

If you want, I can post some code I use on an image gallery system I use.
It databases images along with a set "groups" that each image can be
associated with.  The groups determine the sections of the image gallery and
each image can belong to any number of galleries.  In the upload form,
there's a place to associate an uploaded image with one or more groups.  All
uploaded images have an entry in a select box and as the user changes the
image in the select box, its list of associations is updated to reflect the
groups that image belongs to (the groups are arranged as a field of
checkboxes).  The user can then make changes to an individual image using
the form (or just view each image's associations).  I know you didn't ask
for any code, so let me know if you're interested in seeing how I've done
it.

Unfortunately, there is still a bit of looping through arrays involved.  If
you're performance is that critical in this situation, I would recommend
writing a PHP extension and compiling it in with PHP and Apache.  It's
actually pretty easy if you have some C background.  Check out the
documentation on php.net or get a hold of a copy of "Programming PHP" by
Lerdorf and Tatroe.  I've written several little extensions and found it
quite simple.

HTH,
Zac


"Jeff Donnici" <jdonn...@ay-tee-tee-bee-eye-dot.com> wrote in message
news:JhnZ8.569709$cQ3.52707@sccrnsc01...
> I'm sure there's a simple answer but after browsing php.net and google for
a
> while, I can't seem to find the right function to handle this. Assume I've
> got three tables -- USERS, COLORS, and USER_COLOR_MAP.  The USERS table
has
> an ID and a user's name. The COLORS table has an ID and a color's name.
The
> USER_COLOR_MAP table has two columns -- user_id and color_id. This lets me
> map N colors to each user.
>
> In a form, I want to display a checkbox for each color and, if I'm
> displaying an existing user, I want to pre-check any boxes that have been
> mapped to that user... the HTML is all squared away, so no worries there.
>
> // grab ALL colors
> $ALL_sql = "SELECT id, name FROM colors;"
>
> // grab colors for a certain user
> $MAPPED_sql = "SELECT color_id FROM user_color_map WHERE user_id = ".
> $a_users_id;
>
> Ok, so assuming I run both queries, I've now got two result-sets. I
iterate
> through the ALL result set and create a checkbox for each color. But, at
> each stop, I'd like to search the MAPPED result set to see if the ID value
> appears in it (in the COLOR_ID column)... If so, add the word 'CHECKED' to
> the HTML to pre-check the box.
>
> This is the part I can't seem to find a simple function for. I know I
could
> loop through the MAPPED result set each time to find a match, but that
seems
> awfully inefficient. The IN_ARRAY function looks like just the ticket
except
> that it doesn't seem to like being given a MySQL result set instead of an
> array. Ok, so maybe I create an array from the MAPPED result set... but it
> doesn't look like EXPLODE will do that for me, so I'm back at looping
> through the MAPPED result set and creating an array of all the values.
> Surely there must be a better way.
>
> I don't need a bunch of code, but a pointer or reference to function(s)
that
> would be applicable would be most appreciated!
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
>  -- jeff
>
>