How do a populate a drop down menu from a database without repeating the data?

Question

I am trying to create a search field that is a dynamically populated drop down menu. The code to query the database and populate the menu is as follows:

<form action="<?=$SERVER['PHP_SELF'];?>" method="post" name="nameSearch">
<label for="nameMenu">  
<p>Choose a name from the drop down menu<br />  
to retrieve all the data for that person.</p>  
</label>
<select name="dateMenu" id="dateMenu">
    <option value="0" selected="selected">Choose a name</option>
    <?php
      $sql_search = 'SELECT id, name from $tbl_name';
      $query_search = mysql_query($sql_search);
      while($row = mysql_fetch_array($query_search))
      {
        echo '<option value=' . $row['id'] . '>' . $row['name'] . '</option>';
      }
    ?>
</select>
<input type="submit" name="searchName" value="Find">
</form>

The problem is that because the database holds information that causes it to store the same name repeatedly I get the same name listed as an option in my drop down menu.

The DB looks like so:

----------------------------------------------------------  
| id | name |    uniqueImage     |    date    |   time   |   
----------------------------------------------------------  
| 1  | John | uniqueImage001.png | 2011-03-11 | 14:21:20 | 
| 2  | James| uniqueImage002.png | 2011-03-11 | 14:24:30 | 
| 3  | Joe  | uniqueImage003.png | 2011-03-11 | 14:26:10 | 
| 4  | John | uniqueImage004.png | 2011-03-11 | 14:40:10 | 
| 5  | Joe  | uniqueImage005.png | 2011-03-11 | 14:56:32 | 
| 6  | Joe  | uniqueImage006.png | 2011-03-11 | 15:02:50 | 
| 7  | James| uniqueImage007.png | 2011-03-11 | 15:21:25 | 
| 8  | John | uniqueImage008.png | 2011-03-11 | 15:26:30 | 
----------------------------------------------------------  

and the menu options returned look like so:

<option value="1">John</option>  
<option value="2">James</option>  
<option value="3">Joe</option>  
<option value="4">John</option>  
<option value="5">Joe</option>  
<option value="6">Joe</option>  
<option value="7">James</option>  
<option value="8">John</option>  

What I need is for the drop down menu to be more like this:

<option value="1">John</option>  
<option value="2">James</option>  
<option value="3">Joe</option>

This way I can get all of the unique images associated with a particular user. I don't need every name in the DB returned in my query, simply each name only one time. I am thinking I may need to set up a relational DB scheme, but I am trying to avoid this. Is there any other way to set this up? Thanks.

Answer 1

Change your database call to be:

SELECT id, name from $tbl_name group by id, name