mysql/php format/syntax left join

[eciym]

hej, I was wondering if some of you wonderful people could give me a heads up on this,

I have been reading up and have summised that I need a LEFT JOIN

As i want it to list all the teams regardless of if they have points or not.

I have a table of teams with a UID and the team name.

then i have a table called points that stores the UID of the teams table as a foreign key, the number of points and each entry is timestamped for historical review later on.

what I want to do is display all the teams and the total number of points each team has acrued.

I get the sum of the teams with this
$query = "SELECT pofid, SUM(teampoints) FROM points GROUP BY pofid";

I presumed that being a relational database i wouldnt have to save the team name in the points table. Assumed it would be possible to get the team names also.

but how to get a query to display the team as well has foxed me.

I got this far
SELECT pofid, SUM(teampoints) AS totalpoints FROM points GROUP BY pofid LEFT JOIN teams ON points.pofid = teams.teid

was I even close? miles out? what did I miss? This seems like it should be so simple.

Am I barking up the wrong tree? should I be looking to create a totals feild in the teams table and update that with a total from the points table. to me that seems like it shouldnt be needed.

another question pops in to my head also;
How do I echo the aliis totalpoints in PHP?

Thanks in advance for any help with this.

[andrewsmd]

When you select something with AS you just replace it's column name with something you want so to echo totalpoints it would be something like $row['totalpoints']; instead of $row['SUM(teampoints)'];