Turning text into links?

[Stevis2006]

Hi all,

This is probably dead simple and i am overlooking something, but here goes.

I display the category index of artists in my database via sending an id from a dropdown on a page named choice.php, to a page named view.php. (eg. All artists beggining with A, wil get called through the url, when the selection is made from the dropdown on choice.php....eg..http://www.hgvygvy.com/view.php?category=1...(A-Z, 1-26)
What i want to know is, how can i turn the artist name for each artist, into a link to a page that displays the data for that particular artist from the database, from db fields, records artist_name,album_title, in db table upload?

Many Thanks, Steve

[siteguru]

Is there an ID number for each artist? (There should be if you have structured your database sensibly). ...

$category = $_GET['category'];
$sql = "SELECT {fields} FROM table WHERE category='$category'"
$rs = mysql_query ($sql);
while ( $row = mysql_fetch_array ($rs) ) {
    $artistid = $row['artistid'];
    $artistname = $row['artistname'];
    echo '<a href="viewartist.php?artistid='.$artistid.'">'.$artistname.'</a><br />';
} 

[Stevis2006]

There is an id for each artist, which is auto_increment.
How would i put that query into my code?

Here is my view.php code...

<?php require('Connections/xxxdb.php'); ?>
<?php
$maxRows_Recordset1 = 10;
$pageNum_Recordset1 = 0;
if (isset($_GET['pageNum_Recordset1'])) {
  $pageNum_Recordset1 = $_GET['pageNum_Recordset1'];
}
$startRow_Recordset1 = $pageNum_Recordset1 * $maxRows_Recordset1;

$colname_Recordset1 = "-1";
if (isset($_GET['category'])) {
  $colname_Recordset1 = (get_magic_quotes_gpc()) ? $_GET['category'] : addslashes($_GET['category']);
}
mysql_select_db($database_xxxdb, $xxxdb);
$query_Recordset1 = sprintf("SELECT artist_name, album_title, category FROM upload2 WHERE category = '%s' ORDER BY artist_name DESC", $colname_Recordset1);
$query_limit_Recordset1 = sprintf("%s LIMIT %d, %d", $query_Recordset1, $startRow_Recordset1, $maxRows_Recordset1);
$Recordset1 = mysql_query($query_limit_Recordset1, $xxxdb) or die(mysql_error());
$row_Recordset1 = mysql_fetch_assoc($Recordset1);

if (isset($_GET['totalRows_Recordset1'])) {
  $totalRows_Recordset1 = $_GET['totalRows_Recordset1'];
} else {
  $all_Recordset1 = mysql_query($query_Recordset1);
  $totalRows_Recordset1 = mysql_num_rows($all_Recordset1);
}
$totalPages_Recordset1 = ceil($totalRows_Recordset1/$maxRows_Recordset1)-1;
?>
<link href="/standard.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

<style type="text/css">
<!--
.style10 {
	font-size: 14;
	color: #999933;
}
-->
</style>
<title>xxxxx - Search Results</title><p>&nbsp;</p>
<div align="center" class="style1 style10">
  <p><?php echo $totalRows_Recordset1 ?> Category Result Found<br>
  </p>
</div>
<table width="383" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="8" cellspacing="5">
  <tr>
    <td><div align="center" class="style5">Artist / Group </div></td>
    <td><div align="center" class="style5">Album Title </div></td>
  </tr>
  
  <?php do { ?>
    <tr>
      <td class="style6"><div align="center"><?php echo $row_Recordset1['artist_name']; ?>
</div></td>
      <td class="style6"><div align="center"><?php echo $row_Recordset1['album_title']; ?></div></td>
    </tr>

    <?php } while ($row_Recordset1 = mysql_fetch_assoc($Recordset1)); ?>
</table>
<?php
mysql_free_result($Recordset1);
?>

Thanks again,
Steve