Hey,

Hi guys (First post), how're ya'll?

What I'm trying to do is to stack the 'items' that are inside the 'container' getting opened, so I can then make the user get the right quantity of items.

This is also known as a "loot" function (Web-based games FTW)

Anyways, my logic is become flawed as I've been a little sleep deprived lately, so I was wondering if you guys could help me out.
These are my two attempts, and what was wrong with them:

Attempt #1 - 'For each item in the container...'

PHP Code:

// For each item inside the container...
for($i = 0; $i < count($containersItemIDs); $i++) {
  if($containersItemIDs[$i] != "") {
    // Check if the selected item is the same as the previous item
    if($containersItemIDs[$i] == $containersItemIDs[($i-1)]) {
        // It is, so add 1 to the quantity of the previous item inside the new array
        $containersItemOccurrences[($i-1)]['quantity']++;
    } else {
        // It isn't, so set a row in the new array, with the ID and inital quantity.
        $containersItemOccurrences[$i] = array('itemID' => $containersItemIDs[$i], 'quantity' => 1);
    }
  }
} 


Attempt #2 - 'For each item, count if it's in the string'

PHP Code:

// While there's a result for the query...
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc(mysql_query("SELECT `id` FROM `objects_items`"))) {
   // Count how many there are of that item inside the container
   $subStringCount = substr_count($containerDetails['itemids'], "$row");
   // And if that number is higher than zero...
   if($subStringCount > 0) {
       // Set the number of occurrences (according to item id), to the result of the substr_count()
       $containersItemOccurrences[$row] = $subStringCount;
   }
} 


Problem with #1: It went fine with two items, but that's the highest the quantity value ever went.

Problem with #2: Still trying to debug, the AJAX doesn't go through (which means the codes stuck in a loop?), and the MySQL server hangs (thereby using 90% of my CPU until I reset it).

Any solutions for a 15 year old newbie?
(Some what of a newbie, I've only been doing it for 2 years)

~Tim

P.S - Excuse the indenting of the code, the forum converted my tab-spaces into normal spaces or whatever they're called.

P.P.S - I'm dead tired (It's 3:30am), so excuse my logic, and perhaps newbishness

I'd say the 1st attempt fails because you're using $i-1 which would be -1 when $i = 0, so it tries to reach an undefined index?

The 2nd attempt fails because you're executing the query over and over again.
You must bear in mind that the while will keep executing $row = mysql_fetch_assoc(mysql_query("SELECT `id` FROM `objects_items`")) over and over again until it returns false.
As long as there is at least one result, it will never return false, though, because you're creating a new query on each call.
You should get the query out of the statement and assign it to a variable.
Then you can use mysql_fetch_assoc on the variable.

The first attempt isn't because of that (It'd just return a warning, nothing fatal, although it is bad style)

As for the second attempt:
Oh right, I never really knew much about that syntax for while(), so thanks for telling me that. I'll give it a shot...

~Tim

EDIT: Okay, that solved the problem, and now I'm just trudging through the debugging.
As they say: "1 hour of writing code == 8 days of squashing bugs".

So true...