Creating foreach loops using Code Igniter controller and view

Question

This is a situation I have found myself in a few times and I just want clear it up once and for all.

Best just to show you what I need to do in some example code.

Answer 1

A user on the Code Igniter Forums came up with the solution below. The original thread is here.

It’s not efficient to look up the clips for every sheet separately. Use a JOIN query to get both lists at the same time.

// get the data
$this->db->from('cue_sheets');
$this->db->where('cue_sheets.id', $id);
$this->db->join('clips', 'clips.sheet_id = cue_sheets.id', 'left');
$rawdata = $this->db->get()->result_array();
// prepare the data into a multidimensional array
$data = array();
foreach($rawdata as $row)
{
  // if this is the first clip of a new sheet, make a new entry for it
  if (!isset($data[$row['id']]))
  {
    $data[$row['id']] = $row;
    $data[$row['id']]['clips'] = array();
  }  

  // add the current clip to the sheet
  $data[$row['id']]['clips'][] = $row;
}

Now in your view you can loop through the sheets, and within that, loop through the clips:

foreach($data as $sheet) {
  // make header etc.
  if (sizeof($sheet['clips']))
  {
    foreach($sheet['clips'] as $clip)
    {
      // show clip
    }
  } else {
    // show 'no clips'
  }
} 

Thanks again,

Tim