grouping by for a query

[sabret00the]

yeah my initial idea was gonna be a query per group but if you have 12 catergories that's like an additional 12 queries per page, not good.

Originally Posted by KirbyDE

I don't understand what you actually want to retrieve.

Can you give some example data and what you want to have returned?

an example would be (to elablorate on marco) i have

a table (catergories)
catid title description
1 Automotive For groups referring to cars, bikes or such
2 Computers For groups referring to computers, whether hardwar...
3 Education For groups regarding learning, whether it be help ...
4 Entertainment For groups surrounding anything entertaining, visu...
5 Games For groups surrounding games you love, digital or ...
6 Health & Fitness For groups pertaining to well-being
7 Home & Families For groups regarding the home life
8 Lifestyles For groups surrounding lifestyles whether it be go...
9 Places & Travel For groups referring to towns, cities and holidays
10 Religion & Belief For groups surrounding christianity, islam, buddis...
11 Sports & Recreation For groups referring to sports, whether it be Foot...
12 Others For everything else

now these are leftjoined to a groups table so it will display all groups that fall into each catergory, however i went to make it so it shows a maximum of ten records for each catid

here's the code that pulls this data from the database

PHP Code:

            $grps_categories = $DB_site->query("
                SELECT grps.groupid, grps.title, grps.description, grps.catid, grps_catergories.title AS catname, grps.approved, grps.leaderid
                FROM grps
                LEFT JOIN grps_catergories ON (grps_catergories.catid = grps.catid)
                WHERE grps.approved=1
                ORDER BY grps_catergories.catid ASC, grps.title ASC
            ");

            if (!$DB_site->num_rows($grps_categories))
            { // no groups, this becomes obselete after the first group gets created
                        eval("\$grps_catbits = \"" . fetch_template("groups_browse_cathead") . "\";");
                        $grps_catbits .= "<tr><td class=\"alt1\" align=\"center\">no groups found in this catergory at this time</td></tr>";
                        eval("\$grps_catbits .= \"" . fetch_template("groups_browse_catfoot") . "\";");
            }
            else
            { // display the information
                $row = "0";
                while ($grps_categoryinfo = $DB_site->fetch_array($grps_categories))
                {
                    if ($row == 0)
                    {

                        eval("\$grps_catbits .= \"" . fetch_template("groups_browse_cathead") . "\";");

                        // reset catname store
                        $grps_catidstore = $grps_categoryinfo['catid'];
                        $seperator = TRUE;
                    }

                    if ($grps_catidstore != $grps_categoryinfo[catid] AND $row != 0)
                    {
                        eval("\$grps_catbits .= \"" . fetch_template("groups_browse_catfoot") . "\";");
                        eval("\$grps_catbits .= \"" . fetch_template("groups_browse_cathead") . "\";");
                    }

                    $grps_categoryinfo['title'] = stripslashes($grps_categoryinfo['title']);
                    $grps_categoryinfo['description'] = nl2br(stripslashes($grps_categoryinfo['description']));
                    $grps_categoryinfo['catname'] = stripslashes($grps_categoryinfo['catname']);

                     eval("\$grps_catbits .= \"" . fetch_template("groups_browse_catbit") . "\";");

                    if ($grps_categoryinfo[catid] != $grps_catidstore)
                    {
                        // reset catname store
                        $grps_catidstore = $grps_categoryinfo['catid'];
                    }
                    $row++;
                } //now echo the date into the template
                eval("\$grps_catbits .= \"" . fetch_template("groups_browse_catfoot") . "\";");
            } 


thinking about it, couldn't i add a counter for the catergory and then if it reaches 10 then not echo the template till the catid changes? or would that be intensive on the server resources?