MySQL users table and posts table - matching the ID

Question

I'm quite new to databases so i apologise in advance if this sounds silly. Im creating a basic web application that simulates a micro blogging website. I have three tables authors, posts & comments.

The authors table is described as follows:

aId int(20) NO  PRI NULL    auto_increment
aUser   varchar(30) NO  UNI NULL    
aPass   varchar(40) NO      NULL    
aEmail  varchar(30) NO  UNI NULL    
aBio    mediumtext  YES     NULL    
aReg    datetime    NO      NULL    

the posts table is described below:

pId int(20) NO  PRI NULL    auto_increment
pAuthor int(20) NO  MUL NULL    
pTitle  tinytext    NO      NULL    
pBody   mediumtext  NO      NULL    
pDate   datetime    NO      NULL    

I understand the basics of relationships, but could i ask, if on my web application i want to display the posts and include who posted them, is there a way of doing this so the result set will show the actual username, rather than the numeric ID ? each time a post is created i capture the users ID, so every post created is by a valid user ID and the post table records the user ID of the person who created it, but when viewing the posts in a select query it shows the numbers and not the names associated with them in the authors table. us there a query i could use to do this or a way of doing it so when use a select * from authors, it shows the usernames rather than the user ID. Thank you guys.

Answer 1

I think you are looking for a SQL query:

SELECT pTitle, pDate, aUser 
FROM posts
LEFT JOIN authors ON aId=pAuthor
ORDER BY pDate DESC

After the SELECT you tell the MySQL what columns you want to see, with the LEFT JOIN you connect the tables together (by aId and pAuthor) and with ORDER BY you tell the mysql to give them to you ordered by date starting from newest pDate DESC (highest date first)

SELECT posts.*, authors.aUser 
FROM posts 
LEFT JOIN authors ON aId=pAuthor
WHERE pTitle LIKE "%news%"
ORDER BY pDate DESC, aUser ASC

to see the author's name when searching for posts with title containing "news" sorted from the newest posts, and in case two posts having the same timestamp, show them ordered by users name (Adam will go before Zachariash)

In case you do not need to see more than title, date and users name, use the 1st row from the first query above