MySQL, group_concat

merging data together

[someone]

I posted this message before.

I have a couple thousand rows of data like this:

Book_num Title Price Category Abstract  
b158 PHP   5 101 PHP is cool  
b158 PHP   5 203 PHP is cool  
b158 PHP   5 309 PHP is cool  
c201 C+   10 102 Learn C+  
c201 C+   10 212 Learn C+  
C201 C+   10 366 Learn C+  

With the suggestion of some experts here, I was able to merge the different Category data into one column and just have one row of each Book_num using Mysql's GROUP_CONCAT.

Book_num Title Price Category Abstract  
b158 PHP   5 101,203,309 PHP is cool  
c201 C+   10 102,212,366 Learn C+  

This worked fine. But now, I need to do something like this and I am not sure how to start it.

Book_num Title Price Category1 Category2 Category 3 Abstract  
b158 PHP   5 101 203 309 PHP is cool  
c201 C+   10 102 212 366 Learn C+  

So instead of merging the catagory into one column, I want one each of them to have its own column, category1, category2, category3.

Sorry the alignment looks awfule on screen.

[jatar_k]

one option would be to

create a new table
select row from old table using php
split column to build new insert query
insert new row into new table

would work, a couple thousand rows wouldn't take long