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Now that you’ve had a chance to try this for yourself, I’m going to show you how I solved this challenge. When it comes to programming, there is alway more than one way to do something. If you solved this challenge in a different way than what I am going to show you, GREAT! Now you’ll have two ways to accomplish this and will be able to compare those two options when you run into other similar situations.
Example Code
functions.php
function genre_array($category = null) {
$category = strtolower($category);
include("connection.php");
try {
$sql = "SELECT genre, category"
. " FROM Genres "
. " JOIN Genre_Categories "
. " ON Genres.genre_id = Genre_Categories.genre_id ";
if (!empty($category)) {
$results = $db->prepare($sql
. " WHERE LOWER(category) = ?"
. " ORDER BY genre");
$results->bindParam(1,$category,PDO::PARAM_STR);
} else {
$results = $db->prepare($sql . " ORDER BY genre");
}
$results->execute();
} catch (Exception $e) {
echo "bad query";
}
$genres = array();
while ($row = $results->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
$genres[$row["category"]][] = $row["genre"];
}
return $genres;
}
suggest.php
<select name="genre" id="genre">
<option value="">Select One</option>
<?php
$genre_array = genre_array();
foreach ($genre_array as $category=>$options) {
echo "<optgroup label=\"$category\">";
foreach ($options as $option) {
echo "<option value=\"$option\"";
if (isset($genre) && $genre==$option) {
echo " selected";
}
echo ">$option</option>";
}
echo "</optgroup>";
}
?>
</select>
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