left join with extra conditions

[frankstuner]

I'm trying to setup a rating app for images. I want to display the images that haven't been rated by the current logged user.

This covers two tables, I've successfully joined the tables but the extra conditions:
1. must be an image
2. exclude any images that have already been rated by the current user
are not working.

Its displaying the results as if the 2 AND conditions aren't there at all.

SELECT ver_data_media.id, ver_data_media.value, ver_data_media.ref, ver_data_media.type, ver_data_rating.a
FROM ver_data_media
LEFT JOIN ver_data_rating
ON ver_data_media.ref = ver_data_rating.a
AND ver_data_media.type = 'image'
AND ver_data_rating.a != $current_user->ID

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks Frank.

[eval(BadCode)]

SELECT 
  ver_data_media.id, 
  ver_data_media.value, 
  ver_data_media.ref, 
  ver_data_media.type, 
  ver_data_rating.a

FROM ver_data_media LEFT JOIN ver_data_rating
  ON ver_data_media.ref = ver_data_rating.a

WHERE  ver_data_media.type  = 'image'
  AND ver_data_rating.a    != $current_user->ID

Assuming MySQL, you could put all three conditions into the FROM clause. I have learned that this is not typically what you want in the case of a two table join. Putting multiple conditions into the JOIN ... ON clause is used when you want to... lets call it "persuade" MySQL to join a certain way. It seems much more appropriate to put the extra two conditionals into the WHERE clause. However, for the sake of showing you how it would be done in the ON clause:

SELECT 
  ver_data_media.id, 
  ver_data_media.value, 
  ver_data_media.ref, 
  ver_data_media.type, 
  ver_data_rating.a

FROM ver_data_media LEFT JOIN ver_data_rating
  ON (ver_data_media.ref = ver_data_rating.a
        AND ver_data_media.type  = 'image'
        AND ver_data_rating.a    != $current_user->ID);

Additionally, I would not write values from PHP variables directly into the query. Possibly a format string is better? You could use sprintf(%d) to force $current_user->ID to be an integer.

tl;dr Parenthesis are your friend.