need help with a php/mysql problem

Hey everyone, I am not usually invovled with php so i Guess it fair to say I am a total n00b.
Either way, I need some quick help.

I have a website that offers a "top 100" voting system of other sites.

I have 3 categories of websites titled education,professional, and public.
these websites have been preorganized into these categorys using a "category_id" (either 1,2 or 3)
i need to be able to pull these different categories out of an already made mysql db onto a page.

hopefully using a something like this :

Code:

http://www.mywebsite.com/sites.php?category=(_________)

what exactly do I need to include in my "sites.php" to allow such a thing?

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What you ask is very general.

First of all do you have any basic php and mysql knowledge? If not you should try to read some basic php tutorials before doing this.

Yeah, i know its about as general as it gets.
I do have knowledge in mysql and how this all works.
I just can't seem to find any tutorials that deal with anything besides the most basic.

I guess a better question is what is the code used in a php file to say

pull and display any file in my mysql db with a "category_id" of 1,2 or 3?

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This could be something like that:

Code:

<?php
$result = mysql_query("SELECT id,url FROM categories WHERE id = '".(int)$_GET['category']."' LIMIT 1");
if (!$result) {
    echo 'Could not run query: ' . mysql_error();
    exit;
}
$row = mysql_fetch_row($result);

echo $row[0];
echo $row[1];
?>

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