Wsrtjtyk

Could anybody point me in the right direction?

I have a database with a handful of messages. Each message has a username also..

I wish to use the names of the messages in a drop down menu so that the user can click a user and view the messages from the user.

THE PROBLEM: the drop down list shows every user of every message and i don-not know how to separate the users so that if there is 7 messages from ROB only 1 ROB will be shown in the drop down list..

I hope I am making sense here.

So if anyone could help me here, I would be grateful.

What sort of query should I be using the separate every user from the database so I can show them in the drop-down menu, as individual users...

Instead of the same user being shown for as many messages as the user wrote.

Below is the current query..

<div class='userbox'>

<header class='ubheader'>Contacts</header>

<section class='ubmain'>

";





    $db = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=messages", 'root', ''); // 1. set database with this instead of conect - or change conect to this



    $query="SELECT * FROM `messagedatabase` WHERE `listID`='$listID' ORDER BY messagedate DESC";



    $stat=$db->prepare($query);



    $stat->execute();

        $Mcount = $stat->rowCount();

        $messagecount=$Mcount;



        while($row = $stat->fetch()){

             $messageaccountname=$row['messageaccountname'];



                if ($messageaccountname != $useraccountname){

                            echo"<div class='ubnames' onclick='selectmessage("{$messageaccountname}")'>{$messageaccountname}</div>";  

                }

        }







echo "

</section>



</div>

";              

Any help would be appreciated.

Many thanks.

The simple solution would be to add a DISTINCT clause to your query, such as:
SELECT DISTINCT messageaccountname FROM ....

Beyond that, it sounds like the database isn't normalized. Ideally, you'd have your accounts in a separate table that would be related to your messagedatabase table. But database design is a different discussion beyond the scope of this post.