On Mon, 21 Jun 2004, David Blomstrom wrote: > Suppose I have a field with the names of states, > linked to their home pages: > > <a href="http://www.alabama.gov/";>Alabama</a> > <a href="http://access.wa.gov/";>Washington</a> > > If I display this on a webpage, I'll get the names of > the states, linked to their home pages. But is there a > simple strategy that will let me to display the names > UNLINKED on another page, or do I have to create a > second field that lists simple state names, with no > URL's?
Doing the way you're suggesting would create some problems: - data redundancy (<a href="http:// and </a> on every field) - storing two different information on a single field (state name and URL) - the MySQL index would be filled with at least 8 bytes of useless data (a href="), wasting more disk space - no database-friendly way to search for states or even to sort them by name Separate data from how it's displayed. I mean, create a table called "states" with the fields "state_id", "state_name" and "state_url". Put the data in the according field: state_id state_name state_url 1 Alabama http://www.alabama.gov 2 Washington http://access.wa.gov ...and so on Then you can easily list only state names (ordered by state_name, for example), not showing the URL. []s, Salvi. > > Thanks. > -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
