PHP MySQL display multiple rows grouped by common fields

I'm trying to figure out how to list COMPANY 's CATEGORY 's and BRAND 's, where the layout would look similar to this:

COMPANY 1

• CATEGORY 1:

  BRAND X

  BRAND Y

  BRAND Z

• CATEGORY 2

  BRAND A

  BRAND B

  BRAND C

• CATEGORY 3

  BRAND A

  B开发者_如何学运维RAND X

I'm not familiar enough with PHP + MySQL to find the right SEARCH and PHP output in order to achieve this.

My table looks similar to this:

COMPANY   | CATEGORY   | BRAND    
--------------------------------
Company 1 | Category 2 | Brand A  
Company 1 | Category 2 | Brand B  
Company 1 | Category 2 | Brand C  
Company 1 | Category 1 | Brand X  
Company 1 | Category 1 | Brand Y  
Company 1 | Category 1 | Brand Z  
Company 1 | Category 3 | Brand A  
Company 1 | Category 3 | Brand X  

---

<?php
$result = mysql_query("
  SELECT
    *
  FROM
    some_table
  ORDER BY
    company,
    category,
    brand
") 
or trigger_error('Query failed in '. __FILE__ .
   ' on line '. __LINE__ .'. '. mysql_error(), E_USER_ERROR);
if (mysql_num_rows($result)) {
  $companies = array();
  while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    $companies[$row['company']][$row['category']][] = $row['brand'];
  }

  foreach ($companies AS $company => $categories) {
    echo '<h2>'. htmlentities($company, ENT_COMPAT, 'UTF-8') .'</h2>';
    echo '<ul>';
    foreach ($categories AS $category => $brands) {
      echo '<li>'. htmlentities($category, ENT_COMPAT, 'UTF-8');
      foreach ($brands AS $brand) {
        echo '<br><em>'. htmlentities($brand, ENT_COMPAT, 'UTF-8') .'</em>';
      }
      echo '<br>&nbsp;</li>';
    }
    echo '</ul>';
  }
}

jsbin

---

Just Fetch everything and put it in a hash in php, something along the line of

$rs = mysql_query("Select * from myTable");
$results = array();
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($rs)) {
    $results[$row['COMPANY']][$row['CATEGORY']][] = $row['BRAND'];
}

$results would contain data structure like

array(
    'Company 1' => array(
        'Category 1' => array('Brand X', 'Brand Y')
... etc
)

try var_dump($results) to make more sense out of it