Seek rows upon array

kpop · Web Design Newbie Joined: Jul 12, 2004 Posts: 11

I have the PHP script with array of IDs.

I have to make output to the screen of the table data based on the array IDs i have.

I mean, mot only those IDs, but also the same order:
If there is in table:
ID data
--------
1. dog
2. cat
3. bird
4. horse
5. cow

And array is:
0:4
1:2
2:5

there has to be the output:

horse
cat
cow

filtered and ordered.

In MySQL there is no something like ORDER BY array.

Also, no possibility to JOIN array to table (or I do not know for the possibility).

I made while loop with something like:
$i=0;
$imax=mysql_num_rows("SELECT data FROM mytable");
while ($i<$imax) {
$toshow=mysql_fetch_row("SELECT data FROM mytable WHERE ID=$id[i]
LIMIT 1");
echo "$toshow
";
$i++;
}

I am emphasizing that I simplified the code here.
It works, but is there a way to do it better?
Is the WHERE fast (at the moment I am testing this with only few rows)? Is there faster fetch possibility for just one row? Is HAVING faster?