Group PHP results on first letter of name

I have a query which gets all records ordered by last_name. Now I would like to create a loop that groups these results by the first letter of the开发者_StackOverflow last name and display the letter above the group i.e.

A
-----------
Albert
Alfred

C
-----------
Charles

D
-----------
Delta etc...

Thanks!

Order the results by lastname on MySQL side and track the change of the first letter on PHP side:

<?php

$rs = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM mytable ORDER BY lastname");

while ($rec = mysql_fetch_assoc($rs)) {
    if ($initial !== strtoupper(substr($rec['lastname'], 0, 1)) {
        $initial = strtoupper(substr($rec['lastname'], 0, 1));
        print "$initial\n";
    }
    print $rec['lastname'] . "\n";
}

?>

$letter = null;
foreach ($array as $word) {
  if ($letter != $word[0]) {
    $letter = $word[0];
    echo '<b>'.strtoupper($word[0]) . '</b><br/>';
  }
  echo strtoupper($word) . '<br/>';
}

and to tour query add line :

order by `your_field` asc

Allready tried something like this?

$last = '';
foreach($data as $key=>$row){
    if(substr($row['last_name'],0,1)!=$last) echo '<br /><br />'.substr($row['last_name'],0,1).'<br />----------------<br />';
    $last = substr($row['last_name'],0,1);
    echo $row['last_name'];
}

In your view you could then loop the records and split them up:

$current = '';
foreach ($rows as $r) {
    if (!$current || strtolower($r['name'][0]) != $current) {
        $current = strtolower($r['name'][0]);
        echo strtoupper($current).'<br />---------------';
    }
    echo $row['name'].'<br />';
}

in your query, try adding something like:

group by substr(last_name,1,1)

i.e.

select substr(last_name,1,1) as alpha, *
from tableName
group by substr(last_name,1,1)

Yes you can achive this using MySql itself

In my case brand_name going to be list out as you expected.

Example :

SELECT id, upper(SUBSTR(brand_name, 1, 1))  AS alpha FROM products WHERE  brand_name != ''  group by alpha
UNION
SELECT id, upper(SUBSTR(brand_name, 1, 1))  AS alpha FROM products WHERE  brand_name != '' order by brand_name COLLATE NOCASE

Result :

    A
    A Card
    A Cef
    A Cef O
    B
    Bacticef Tab
    Bacticin
    Bactidrox
    Bactidrox Kid
    ........

Hope it will help someone.