Joins - Merge result into single, multidimensional array - mysql

Question

I'm performing a simple query that joins two tables together. What I get is something like this.
array(
[0] => array(
'id' => 52
'name' => 'charles',
'sale_id' => 921,
'sale_time' => 1306393996,
'sale_price' => 54.21
),
[1] => array(
'id' => 52
'name' => 'charles',
'sale_id' => 922,
'sale_time' => 1306395000,
'sale_price' => 32.41
),
...
);
...which is the expected result. However, I'd like the query to return something like this:
array(
[0] => array(
'id' => 52,
'name' => 'charles',
'sales' => array(
[0] => array(
'sale_id' => 921,
'sale_time' => 1306393996,
'sale_price' => 54.21
),
[1] => array(
'sale_id' => 922,
'sale_time' => 1306395000,
'sale_price' => 32.41
),
...
)
)
)
Now I realize I could simply perform two queries, one for the user info, and another for sales, and merge those arrays together using whatever language I'm using (PHP in this case). But I have many arrays of properties and querying and merging for those seems awfully inelegant to me (although it does work). It seems to me there'd be a way to work with a single, unified object without duplicating data.
Just wondering if there was a no-brainer query, or if that's simply not easy through MySQL alone.

Answer 1

I would say this is not possible with MySQL alone - you have to do some tricks at application level. That is, because even if you send a single query that will bring you all the data from MySQL to your application (PHP), they will come as a denormalized array of data - your first case.
If you want to get the data as in your second case, I'd recommend using some ORM - in Ruby there is ActiveRecord, in Perl there are Class::DBi, DBIx::Class and many more - I can not name one for PHP that is able to do this, but I am sure there are plenty.