formatting a classifieds section

afrika_people · August 11th, 2004, 04:58 PM

hello
i have a database table with a foreign key reference from another table. Which is the Markets table.

I now have a products column. As below
      Market Products descriptions
  Electronics sonyJ70 2003 sony mobile phone
  Electronics Binatone 3000 Binatone toaster
Computers Dell navasion300 Dell desktops

etc....

PROBLEM:
i created a repeated region on my site. So all Markets would be repeated.
e.g you have

Books
Communications
Computers & Internet
Electronics
e-Fax
GSM
web2phone SMS

now i want to be able to select the total number of products from the table and have them inserted into the repeated region of the markets area. to have

Books (340)
Communications (44)
Computers & Internet (1923)
Electronics (232)
e-Fax (32)
GSM (23)
web2phone SMS (31)

How do i go about this ? I am made to understand that i use ASP scripts to loop through the query results to format the page as above

Thank you

1newday

Christiaan van Opstal · August 11th, 2004, 08:16 PM

The the fastest way would be to use a query with the COUNT function to count how many products there are in each market. Example:

Code:

SELECT COUNT(market) AS marketCount FROM tableName WHERE market = 'Electronics'

You would have to run the query for each individual market, but if you're looping through the markets already, this shouldn't be too big a of a deal. If you're using a database other then access, you might be able to use the COUNT function in conjunction with the DISTINCT function, which would save you a lot of trouble, so let us know if you're not using access.

A quick (and dirty) example:

Code:

Set varRsMarkets = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset")
Set varRsMCount = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset")

strSql = "SELECT market FROM marketsTable"
varRsMarket.Open strSql, yourConnection

While NOT varRs.EOF
     strSql = "SELECT COUNT(market) AS marketCount FROM productTable WHERE market = '" & varRs("market") & "'"
     varRsMCount.Open strSql, yourConnection
     response.write varRs("market") & "(" & varRsMCount("marketCount") & ")<br>"
Wend

varRs.Close

That will list all the markets and the number of products in that market.