IMPORTANT EDIT:
It is now possible to achieve this with DATETIME fields since MySQL 5.6.5, take a look at the other post below...
Previous versions can't do that with DATETIME...
But you can do it with TIMESTAMP:
mysql> create table test (str varchar(32), ts TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> desc test;
+-------+-------------+------+-----+-------------------+-------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-------+-------------+------+-----+-------------------+-------+
| str | varchar(32) | YES | | NULL | |
| ts | timestamp | NO | | CURRENT_TIMESTAMP | |
+-------+-------------+------+-----+-------------------+-------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> insert into test (str) values ("demo");
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> select * from test;
+------+---------------------+
| str | ts |
+------+---------------------+
| demo | 2008-10-03 22:59:52 |
+------+---------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql>
CAVEAT: IF you define a column with CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON as default, you will need to ALWAYS specify a value for this column or the value will automatically reset itself to "now()" on update. This means that if you do not want the value to change, your UPDATE statement must contain "[your column name] = [your column name]" (or some other value) or the value will become "now()". Weird, but true. I am using 5.5.56-MariaDB
You can use GROUP_CONCAT
:
SELECT person_id,
GROUP_CONCAT(hobbies SEPARATOR ', ')
FROM peoples_hobbies
GROUP BY person_id;
As Ludwig stated in his comment, you can add the DISTINCT
operator to avoid duplicates:
SELECT person_id,
GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT hobbies SEPARATOR ', ')
FROM peoples_hobbies
GROUP BY person_id;
As Jan stated in their comment, you can also sort the values before imploding it using ORDER BY
:
SELECT person_id,
GROUP_CONCAT(hobbies ORDER BY hobbies ASC SEPARATOR ', ')
FROM peoples_hobbies
GROUP BY person_id;
As Dag stated in his comment, there is a 1024 byte limit on the result. To solve this, run this query before your query:
SET group_concat_max_len = 2048;
Of course, you can change 2048
according to your needs. To calculate and assign the value:
SET group_concat_max_len = CAST(
(SELECT SUM(LENGTH(hobbies)) + COUNT(*) * LENGTH(', ')
FROM peoples_hobbies
GROUP BY person_id) AS UNSIGNED);
Best Solution
mysql_connect() returns the resource you might be looking for.
Unless I'm misunderstanding..