# PHP + mySQL table joins, lookups, and parsing. Oh My!

**URL:** https://forum.kirupa.com/t/php-mysql-table-joins-lookups-and-parsing-oh-my/319309
**Category:** programming
**Created:** [February 15, 2011, 10:23pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/php-mysql-table-joins-lookups-and-parsing-oh-my/319309 "2011-02-15T22:23:04Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![edward\_ford](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7993a0/32.png) [@edward\_ford](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/edward_ford)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2011, 10:23pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/php-mysql-table-joins-lookups-and-parsing-oh-my/319309/1 "2011-02-15T22:23:04Z")

</div>

Hello all! First time poster, long time troller.

I feel like this little project I’m working on is taking me from the minors into the pros. Or at least the semi-pros.

I have a table (res\_table) that is about 200 columns wide. One of these columns is named “feature\_lk”, and it consists of a string of numbers which are “|” delimited. The numbers stand for feature catagories which reside in another table named “features”

Thanks to this thread: [http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=224203](http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=224203) I figured out how to parse the features out!

No my problem is how to look them up? I feel like I either need to join my two tables, but I’m not sure how, or I need to do a another select query for each of the features that I parse… This is what I have to far (removed connection strings for posting purposes)

```php
<?php
$sql = ("SELECT * FROM res_table");
$result = mysql_query($sql);

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
	$feature_string = $row['features_lk'];
	$features = explode( '|', $feature_string );

	foreach( $features as $feature ) {
	    $feature = trim( $feature );
	    echo $feature.': ';

	    $sql2 = "SELECT * from features where features.feature_id like $feature";
	    $result2 = mysql_query($sql2);
	    while ($row2 = mysql_fetch_array($result2))
	    {
	    	$feat_desc = $row2['feature_description']; //this is another column in the features table
	    	echo $feat_desc . '<br>';
	    }
	}
	echo '<br>';
}
?>

```

SO that works OK because when I run it, i’ll get about results that look like this:

13: None  
62: Water Softener - Rented  
71: Full  
168: Barn  
222: Storage Shed  
226: Walkout  
309: Detached  
347: 2 Story  
384: Attic Storage  
439: Laundry Hook Up  
466: Rural  
476: Trees  
512: School Bus  
562: Mud Room  
563: Pantry  
2273: Septic Tank  
643: Private Well

My question is: is there a better way to do this? There are about 10k rows in the main res\_table with only a couple hundred hits, you can see that the number select statements performed grow LARGE in no time at all.

I’m sure this is PHP + MySQL 101 stuff, but I’m just a beginner so any ideas? Thanks in advance.