Query with sub-results from another table - mysql

Question

I have the following two database tables:
`membership_members` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`name` tinytext NOT NULL,
`active` tinyint(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT '1',
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
)
`membership_payments` (
`date` date NOT NULL,
`amount` int(11) NOT NULL,
`member` int(11) NOT NULL,
KEY `member` (`member`)
)
I wish to list all the members, and for each of them I would like to show the list of all the payments by that member. The membership_payments.member column is a foreign key membership_members.id (this is MySQL so I cannot explicitly specify a foreign key). Notice that I do want to list a member even if he doesn't have any payments.
So something like:
* John Smith
- 2012-05-06 $100
- 2012-01-02 $100
* Brian Jones
* Mike Jackson
- 2012-09-02 $50
I have tried with this query:
SELECT id, name, active, date, amount
FROM `membership_members`,
`membership_payments`
WHERE membership_members.id = member
This of course gives me tha data I need, but not exactly how I need it as it returns a row for each payment. That means that I later have to group the rows (in PHP) by member id so that I don't list a member multiple times. I can do that, but I believe that it would be easier and faster to do it in SQL. Also, this query only gives me users which have payments with their id.
I feel that this should be simple, but last time I did anything but the most simple stuff in SQL was 6-7 years ago.
EDIT:
LEFT OUTER JOIN suggested in one of the answers solves the issue with the "missing" members. But what is the best way of grouping results by member IDs? I know there is a GROUP BY clause, but it doesn't give me all the payments for the given member, only one. I suppose I can run a new payments query for each member, but I fear this would be very inefficient (we have around 300-400 members).

Answer 1

You'll need to JOIN the two tables based on referencing key columns.
SELECT id, name, active, date, amount
FROM membership_members
LEFT OUTER JOIN membership_payments
ON membership_members.id = membership_payments.member;
I chose LEFT OUTER JOIN so that the members without payments are also shown.
For more info on joins check http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/join.html
EDIT
Use ORDER BY membership_members.id to get records ordered by a certain column.
Grouping does not behave like sorting. GROUPING merges all records by the column you provided. ORDER BY sorts

Answer 2

use LEFT JOIN
basically, what you are doing now is an INNER JOIN. INNER JOIN only displays a records if it has atleast one record on each table. But LEFT JOIN operates differently. It displays all records on the Lefthand side table whether it has matching record or not on the righthand side table.
SELECT id, name, active, date, amount
FROM `membership_members` a
LEFT JOIN `membership_payments` b
ON a.ID = b.member
To further gain more knowledge about joins, kindly visit the link below:
Visual Representation of SQL Joins

Answer 3

Take a look at GROUP_CONCAT MySQL clause.
Example
OR
You can use CONCAT.
Example
SELECT CONCAT(`membership_payments.date`, ' ', `membership_payments.amount`)
FROM `membership_members`
LEFT OUTER JOIN membership_payments
ON membership_members.id = membership_payments.member;