Any Ideas How To Link A Category And Slug Field Together?

[tradingjamie]

Hi Guys,

I hope you can help me on this: I have a table with a field called 'category' and 'catslug' (stands for category slug)

The slug is because I have categories called " Sound & Isolating" where if I was to use it in a URL it would be ugly because it would read something like /Sound%20&%20Isolating/

So I would make an entry for the catslug to be 'sound-and-isolating' so that it becomes URL friendly like /sound-and-isolating/

Now my problem becomes linking the category with the slug. For instance, I have this code in my sidebar which lists out the categories:

<?php 
    	$result = mysql_query("SELECT DISTINCT category FROM tbprofo");
		
		echo "<ul>";
		while($row=mysql_fetch_array($result))
		{
			echo "<li><a href='categories.php?cat=".strtolower($row['category'])."'>".$row['category']."</a></li>";
		}
		echo "</ul>";
	?>

But when I change the href to $row['catslug'] like in this:

<?php 
    	$result = mysql_query("SELECT DISTINCT category FROM tbprofo");
		
		echo "<ul>";
		while($row=mysql_fetch_array($result))
		{
			echo "<li><a href='categories.php?cat=".strtolower($row['catslug'])."'>".$row['category']."</a></li>";
		}
		echo "</ul>";
	?>

It doesnt echo out my catslug field (i.e. it echos out only the domainname.c0m/categories.php?cat=). Its like it just doesnt know what record its coming from or something.

But can you see what I am trying to do with this code? Im trying to display the text of the category (so for a user it reads "Sound & Isolating") but the href link reads categories.php?cat=sound-and-isolating

Any ideas what I am doing wrong please?

Thanks so much for all your help, this forum is a great help to me, and I promise Ill contribute when I become knowledgeable!

[tradingjamie]

Sorry to bump my own thread... Anyone got any ideas please?

[WingedPanther]

In the second one, you aren't selecting catslug, and you haven't done any limits on your query. I'm not clear on what your database structure is, either.

[tradingjamie]

Thanks very much for your reply WingedPanther.

In the first one I am echoing only the category for the URL:

echo "<li><a href='categories.php?cat=".strtolower($row['category'])."'>".$row['category']."</a></li>";

In the second one I am attempting to echo the category slug:

echo "<li><a href='categories.php?cat=".strtolower($row['catslug'])."'>".$row['category']."</a></li>";

The problem is that it doesnt seem to pull the catslug field (yes there is valid data in this field)

My sql query is deliberately:

"SELECT DISTINCT category FROM tbprofo"

Because I want to pull all the categories only once to list them in my sidebar.

So I can pull data from my database when I use row['category'] but I cant pull it when I use $row['catslug'].

Any ideas?

[tradingjamie]

I think there is an easier way to ask my question...

Is there a way to write something like this:

1 -> mysql_query("SELECT DISTINCT (category + catslug) FROM tbprofo")

Instead of just

2 -> mysql_query("SELECT DISTINCT category FROM tbprofo")

because in 2 I am just selecting the category fields to put into my array, but in 1 I also want to select the catslug field.

[tradingjamie]

I figured it out...

If anybody wants the answer it is this:

$result = mysql_query("SELECT catslug, category FROM tbprofo GROUP BY catslug ORDER BY category");

cheers guys!