ok, a bit of background,
- just into codeigniter
- not a fan of sql and server-side scripts
- i know what joins are
- i have a many-to-many database for the first time
it's because joins typically have the following example as a result. but i wanted to parse this without having to build code to ignore repetitions. it's a 3-table join sample. the issue of repeating values increases as i join more tables:
table1.authorid table1.authorname table2.books table3.favorited
1 john john's book 1 jean
1 john john's book 1 joe
1 john john's book 2 ken
1 john john's book 2 mark
2 mark mark's book 1 alice
2 mark mark's book 1 ted
2 mark mark's book 2 sarah
2 mark mark's book 2 denise
is there a way in codeigniter (or plain PHP) that i can get this array form and turn it into something like json (and parse it like json)
$result = [
{
'authorid':1,
'authorname':'john',
'books':['john's book1','john's book2'],
'favorited':['jean','joe','ken','mark']
},
{
'authorid':2,
'authorname':'mark',
'books':['mark's book1','mark's book2'],
'favorited':['alice','ted','sarah','denise']
}
]
Update: this is not limited to this depth of objects/arrays (like in the example). it can go deeper (arrays in arrays, arrays in objects, objects in arrays, objects in objects)