recursive function to get all the child categories
algorithm, mysql, php, recursion
Solution
I had a hard time trying to figure out your function. I think this will do what you want. It gets all the children of a category with ID $id, and also their children (thus getting the whole sub category, sub sub category effect that you wanted).
function categoryChild($id) {
$s = "SELECT ID FROM PLD_CATEGORY WHERE PARENT_ID = $id";
$r = mysql_query($s);
$children = array();
if(mysql_num_rows($r) > 0) {
# It has children, let's get them.
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($r)) {
# Add the child to the list of children, and get its subchildren
$children[$row['ID']] = categoryChild($row['ID']);
}
}
return $children;
}
This function will return:
$var = array(
'categoryChild ID' => array(
'subcategoryChild ID' => array(
'subcategoryChild child 1' => array(),
'subcategoryChild child 2' => array()
)
),
'anotherCategoryChild ID' => array() # This child has no children of its own
);
It basically returns an array with the ID of the child and an array containing the IDs of its children. I hope this is of any help.
Problem
Here is what I'm trying to do: - i need a function that when passed as an argument an ID (for a category of things) will provide all the subcategories and the sub-sub categories and sub-sub-sub..etc. - i was thinking to use a recursive function since i don't know the number of subcategories their sub-subcategories and so on so here is what i've tried to do so far ``` function categoryChild($id) { $s = "SELECT * FROM PLD_CATEGORY WHERE PARENT_ID = $id"; $r = mysql_query($s); if(mysql_num_rows($r) > 0) { while($row = mysql_fetch_array($r)) echo $row['ID'].",".categoryChild($row['ID']); } else { $row = mysql_fetch_array($r); return $row['ID']; } } ``` If i use return instead of echo, i won't get the same result. I need some help in order to fix this or rewrite it from scratch