Looping through a JOIN'ed MySQL Associative Array

Right, so I've got a query that looks like this:

$bestof_query = "SELECT * FROM physicians p JOIN (awards a, categories c, awardLevels l) ON (a.id = p.id AND c.id = a.category AND l.id = a.level) ORDER BY a.category, a.level ASC ";
$query = mysql_query($bestof_query);

while($result = mysql_fetch_array($query)) {
 extract($result);
 echo "<h3>" . $category . "<h3>";
   foreach($category as $value) {
       echo "<h5>" . $name . "<h5>" . "<p>" . $description . "</p>" . "\r\n";
   }
}

A typical result looks like-

Array (
 [0] => 39  [id] => 1
 [1] => William�B.�Poff [name] => William�B.�Poff
 [2] => 10 South Main Street [address1] => 10 South Main Street
 [3] => Tower A, Suite 1400 [address2] => Tower A, Suite 1400 
 [4] => Jackson [city] => Jackson 
 [5] => VA [state] => VA
 [6] => 24111 [zip] => 24111
 [7] => downtown-jackson [neighborhood] => downtown-jackson
 [8] => 5409837649 [phone] => 5401111111
 [9] => http://www.foo.com [uri] => http://www.foo.com 
 [10] => Foo�Rogers,�PLC [firm] => Foo�Rogers,�PLC
 [11] => 39 
 [12] => 1 [category] => Bankruptcy
 [13] => 1 [level] => 1 
 [14] => 2009 [year] => 2009 
 [15] => 1 
 [16] => Bankruptcy 
 [17] => 1 
 [18] => Platinum [description] => Platinum )

I'm trying to loop through based on the [category] and while the category is equal to Bankruptcy, then output all the results for开发者_开发知识库 bankruptcy, then move on to the next category.

Does that make sense? I've never been very good with loops so thanks in advance!

What I am hoping for is-

<h3>$category</h3>
<ul>
<li>$name - $description</li>
<li>$name - $description</li>
<li>$name - $description</li>
<li>$name - $description</li>
</ul>

And then iterate to the next category. I think a nested loop, but I'm not sure how to do the nested loop.

You need a simple state machine. This is a way of doing a nested loop without doing a real nested loop. Especially as the data-stream is a single-dimension.

$category = '';
while( $result = mysql_fetch_array($query) ) {
    if( $result['category'] != $category ) {
        $category = $result['category'];
        echo "<h3>".$category."</h3>\n";
    }

    echo "<h5>".$result['name']."</h5>\n";
    echo "<p>".$result['description']."</p>\n";
}

It gets more complex if you have markup for each group as a whole, but this is the basic idea. It relies on the fact that that everything in the same category is together, which you achieve with the ORDER BY.

P.S: don't use extract(); it pollutes your namespace.

$query = "SELECT * FROM physicians p JOIN (awards a, categories c, awardLevels l) ON (a.id = p.id AND c.id = a.category AND l.id = a.level) ORDER BY a.category, a.level ASC ";
$query = mysql_query($query);

while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($results)) { 
      $categories[$row['category']][] = $row;
}

foreach($categories as $key=>$value){
    echo"<h3>$key</h3>\r\n";
    echo "<div><ul>\r\n";
    foreach($value as $physician){
    echo "  <li>".$physician['name']." - ".$physician['description']."</li>\r\n";
    }
    echo "</ul></div>\r\n"
}