Hi, Have struggled with this all day, and didn't know where else to ask. If it's not appropriate to the list, I apologise - and advice or pointers would be brilliant, as my head is now hurting!
So here's the situation: 3 tables. f_u_groups f_groups and f_images f_u_groups contains the user's groups with the following columns: fuid, fugids, funame fuid is the primary key (auto incremented), funame is the name of the user-group and fuguids contains a comma-separated list of groups (eg 12,13,14,15). This column (fuguids) corresponds to the column gid (primary key) in f_groups. In plain English, fuguids contains a list of groups (for each user), which are then listed in the table f_groups. When images are inserted into f_images (I'm using PHP, and mysql's "unique" index to prevent duplicates), I need to check against the other two tables to make sure that the *group* the image is labelled as is "active." And by active, I mean whether a group is listed inside *any* of the comma-separated lists in fugids. To insert images, a loop is performed over the f_groups table - so this is where I need the "magic SQL" which I can't work out. Loop over each row in the f_groups - check f_groups.gid *inside* f_u_groups.fugids. I thought IN would do it: SELECT group_name, gid, fugids FROM f_u_groups, f_groups WHERE gid IN (fugids) But that only cross-referenced the first number in the comma-list (fugids) with the groups from f_groups. So it returned 2 group names. Sorry for the *MASSIVELY* and overtly-complicated message. I hope it a) explains my problem and b) someone can decode it! PS incidentally, I could do this quite easily in PHP...using loops, and querying on each number in the lists. But this is obviously massively ineffecient - up to 40 queries for just one simple request! -- Will -- The Corridor of Uncertainty -- -- http://www.cricket.mailliw.com/ -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
