CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpmysql
chip
chip

Reputation: 609

MYSQL Single query to retrieve both single row from one table and many rows as a single field from another

I suspect from how difficult it was to come up with a title for this question that what I am wondering is possible, is simply not. But I am by no means a mysql guru, so here goes.

I am currently rewriting an application I was tasked to maintain. It's essentially an event management system that books rooms. A single event will often have multiple rooms associated with it.

It's quite common throughout the application in different parts to have to list a table of events that include the rooms in a column along with other event information.

At present the application stores the rooms as a comma separated list of id numbers, eg. 1,5,7 I want to normalise this to help with other queries that are currently difficult due to this arrangement.

So I have separated the rooms from the events table with another table called event_rooms. This table consists of 

id
event_id
room_id

And I'm putting in multiple rows into this table for each room an event is in. This fixes lots of problems in the application and ideally I'd like to keep it like this.

So getting to the question I am trying to work out if with a single query I can get the event table row along with all the rooms the event is in ? To allow me to create tables of events simply that include the list of events.

The event table is simple, basically 

-id
-event_name
-event_date
-notes

Is this possible ? Or do I have to do multiple queries (with 100+ events on a page I am keen to avoid this since this will mean 101 queries+ per page.

Or is there a overall better design choice I may not have considered ? I'm working with PHP in case your ideas involve application code.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 81

Answers (1)

Zen_silence
Zen_silence

Reputation: 329

I made a SQL Fiddle which I think solves what you were asking: http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/71c8d/4

There are two queries:

  • the first one returns a comma separated list of the room id's
  • the second one returns a comma separated list of the room numbers because i assume you have a rooms table as well

But as Strawberry commented this is something that would be covered on any basic mysql tutorial I reccomend http://www.w3schools.com/sql/ as a good starting point.

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions