Nesting JSON in PHP

Question

I have this in php

$comment = array;
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($sqlExec, MYSQL_ASSOC)){
 $comment[$row['name']] = $row['comment'];
}
echo json_encode($comment);
Having these results
{"John":"Yo","Dan":"Hello","May":"Bye"}

The problem is I actually have two comments(Zup,Yo) for John, but as you can see, it only displays the last comment of John which is "Yo". So I wanted the results of John to be

{"John":["Yo","Sup"]}

^ is this possible?

How can I do that? Im sorry still having a hard time dealing with JSON. Thanks

This is actually my full code

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($sqlExec, MYSQL_ASSOC)){
 $comment[$row['name']] = $row['comment'];
 $sql_dup = "SELECT name, COUNT(name) AS dup_count 
 FROM comment
 GROUP BY name
 HAVING (COUNT(name) > 1) 
 ";
 $sqlExec_dup = mysql_query($sql_dup, $connection);
 $row_dup = mysql_fetch_array($sqlExec_dup, MYSQL_ASSOC);
 if($row['name'] = $row_dup['name']){
 $sql_dup2 = "SELECT * FROM comment WHERE name = '{$row['name']}'";
 $sqlExec_dup2 = mysql_query($sql_dup2, $connection);
 while($row_dup2 = mysql_fetch_array($sqlExec_dup2, MYSQL_ASSOC)){
 $x += 1;
 if($x <= $row_dup['dup_count']){
 $comment[$row['name']][] = $row_dup2['comment'];
 }
 }
 }
}

If the name has a duplicate, meaning it has more than one comment, still cant get my desired results.

Answer 1

You would have to check whether it already exists or not, and if it does, create an array (or do that from the start)

// Create arrays with names
$comment[$row['name']][] = $row['comment'];

or

// Check if there's an array
if (isset($comment[$row['name']])) {
 if (is_array($comment[$row['name']])) {
 $comment[$row['name']][] = $row['comment'];
 } else {
 $comment[$row['name']] = array($comment[$row['name']], $row['comment']);
 }
} else {
 $comment[$row['name']] = $row['comment'];
}

I should point out that the first solution would be very much preferred because it is a lot more consequent.

Answer 2

Yes, it is possible, but you need to do some preprocessing for that:

$comment = array;
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($sqlExec, MYSQL_ASSOC)){
 if(!isset($comment[$row['name']])) {
 $comment[$row['name']] = array();
 }
 $comment[$row['name']][] = $row['comment'];
}
echo json_encode($comment);

Answer 3

Yes, it's possible. Instead of this line:

$comment[$row['name']] = $row['comment'];

Use this:

$comment[$row['name']] = array('Yo', 'Sup');

And replace the contents of the array with the greetings you want from the database.

Answer 4

Simple change:

$comment[$row['name']] = $row['comment'];

to

$comment[$row['name']][] = $row['comment'];

Each name element of the $comment array was being overwritten each time the same name came up.