Alternating Backgrounds in While Loop

Anon

Hello, it's me again. This technique is used everywhere, look at the topic list right here for an example. There is alternating backgrounds. How would you do that in a while loop? A while loop can only do one thing, as far as I know. Like:

<?
...
while(bla = bla) {
print "<td bgcolor=\"pokedot pink\">Bla</td>";
?>

How would you get the next <td> to be yellow in this situation? Thanks guys.

Anon

i usullay do into this way:

<table>
<?
$count=0;
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($rs)) {
// Handle BGColor
if ($count % 2 == 0) $bgcolor ='yellow';
else $bgcolor = 'pink';
$count++;
// Show Columns
echo "<tr bgcolor=$bgcolor >";
echo "<td align=center>" . stripslashes($row["news_title"]) . " </td>";
echo "<td align=center>" . stripslashes($row["news_nickname"]) . "</td>";
echo "<td align=center>" . stripslashes($row["news_postdate"]) . "</td>";
echo "<td align=center>" . stripslashes($row["news_expiredate"]) . "</td>";
echo "<td align=center><b>" . stripslashes($row["news_approved"]) . "</td>";
echo "<td align=center>" . stripslashes($row["news_counter"]) . "</td>";
echo "</tr>";
}
?>
</table>

Regards, AGX
http://www.badpenguin.org/

Anon

Make a loop control variable with some kind of value in it that will alternate the color. Example :

$thecolor = "pink";
While (something is true):
echo "<td bgcolor=\"$thecolor\"></td>"
if ($thecolor == "pink"):
$thecolor = "yellow";
else:
$thecolor = "pink";
endif;
Endwhile;

And ofcourse you don't have to use the name of the color for the actual value in the variable. You could just increment a variable and change your print statement according to whether the number is odd or even or something like that.

Anon

Thanks for the help, guys! But it's still not working. This is what I have:

$color = "#D8D8D8";
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
print "<tr><td align=\"left\" bgcolor=\"$color\"><font size=\"1\">
<a href=\"book\thread.php3?topic_id=$row[id]\">$row[title]</a></td></tr>";
$color = "#E8E8E8";
}

All it is printing is the table header. Anyone know why? My brain is on standby right now...

Anon

darkjedi86 wrote:

$color = "#D8D8D8";
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
print "<tr><td align=\"left\" bgcolor=\"$color\"><font size=\"1\">
<a href=\"book\thread.php3?topic_id=$row[id]\">$row[title]</a></td></tr>";
$color = "#E8E8E8";
}

did you notice that are you assignin the SAME value
each time to the the color variable ?

Anon

Oops! Ok, fixed that, but that still doesn't fix the problem of the table cells not appearing. Here's what I have now...

}
?>

I'm stumped. Why aren't the table cells showing?!

Anon

If it's only printing the table header, your while loop isn't running at all. Your result set must be empty.
But that code wont alternate the color of the rows anyways. You assign "#E8E8E8" to $color, but you never reset it to the original color. In place of $color = "#E8E8E8" you need to do something like:

if ($color = "#E8E8E8")
$color = "#D8D8D8";
else:
$color = "#E8E8E8";
endif;

Anon

Thanks a lot for your help, guys! I told you my brain was on standby...there was no such variable as $result in the page and I had it in my statement. 🙂