Find change of title in while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) { PHP

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {  
    <h3> <?php echo $row['ideaTitle']; ?> </h3>
    <blockquote>
        <p>
                    <em> 
                        <?php echo $row['feedback']; ?> 
                    </em> 
                </p>
            </blockquote>
<?php } ?>

Here's my working code. I want to attempt to find when $row['ideaTitle'] is new, but I'm not sure how to do it. I thought about setting a temp variable w/ the title name, but I feel like there needs to 开发者_运维技巧be a simpler solution.

Using a temporary variable is pretty much the way to go, I would say -- that's what I do in this kind of situation.

And it generally translates to this kind of code :

$previousTitle = null;
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {  
    if ($row['ideaTitle'] != $previousTitle) {
        // do something when the current line
        // is the first with the current title
    }

    // work with $row

    // Store the current title to the temporary variable,
    // to be able to do the comparison on next iteration
    $previousTitle = $row['ideaTitle'];
}

There is no other way than to use a temporary variable. But instead of using a single last value string, try a count map:

if (@$seen_titles[ $row["ideaTitle"] ]++ == 0) {
     print "new title";
}

This trick works, because the counting up ++ is in effect done after the comparison. It needs an @ error suppression however for the redundant notices here.

Imo this is quite a simple solution. However, you could also preprocess the data and create a title => feedbacks map:

$feedbacks = array();

while (($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))) {
    if(!array_key_exists($row['ideaTitle'], $feedbacks) {
        $feedbacks[$row['ideaTitle']] = array();
    }
    $feedbacks[$row['ideaTitle']][] = $row['feedback'];
}

And then create the output:

<?php foreach($feedbacks as $title => $fbs): ?>
    <h3> <?php echo $title; ?> </h3>
    <?php foreach($fbs as $fb): ?>
        <blockquote>
           <p>
                <em><?php echo $fb ?></em> 
           </p>
        </blockquote>
    <?php endforeach; ?>
<?php endforeach; ?>

Keep a track of previously encountered titles in a key value array.

 $prevTitles = array();
    while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {  
        if($prevTitles[$row['ideaTitle']] == true)
            continue;

        $prevTitles[$row['ideaTitle']] = true;

        <h3> <?php echo $row['ideaTitle']; ?> </h3>
        <blockquote>
            <p>
                        <em> 
                            <?php echo $row['feedback']; ?> 
                        </em> 
                    </p>
                </blockquote>
    <?php } ?>