list output into table format

angela-sw-uk

I wrote my first script which got today's date, then calculated/listed the dates for the next 28 days. I got it to list them one under the other - this worked fine.

I then tried to format it by outputting it to a table 3 columns wide.

I used a do...while to get the 28 days with a switch inside counting 1,2,3 to determine whether it was the start of a row and data or just data.

The output has sorted it out into rows OK, but the data is not lined up in a table.
The three returned dates per row are not 'spaced out' in tabular form.

What am I missing?

Thanking you in anticipation 🙂

<?
$nextday = time();

$i = 1;
$datacount = 1;
do
{
switch ($datacount)
{
case 1: "<TR>"."<TD width=25%>". print("Day ".$i." : ".gmdate("j M Y", $nextday+86400)."</TD>");
$datacount=$datacount+1;
break;
case 2: "<TD width=25%>". print("Day ".$i." : ".gmdate("j M Y", $nextday+86400)."</TD>");
$datacount=$datacount+1;
break;
case 3: "<TD width=25%>". print("Day ".$i." : ".gmdate("j M Y", $nextday+86400)."</TD>"."<br>"."</TR>");
$datacount=$datacount-2;
break;
}

  $i = $i+1;
  $nextday = $nextday+86400;

}
while ($i<29);
?>

</TABLE>

Anon

Interesting approach...

Well... to answer your question, take a look at your switch cases...

case 1: "<TR>"."<TD width=25%>". print("Day ".$i." : ".gmdate("j M Y", $nextday+86400)."</TD>");

Your <tr> and <td>'s are not getting printed out... only the stuff within your print() statement are... try reorganizing it like this.

print "<tr><td>Day $i: " . gmdate("j M Y", $nextday + 86400) . "</td>";

Do the same for the others as well... You can place $variables inside of " ", which makes it much easier. You cannot, however, do the same for functions. Also, you may look into using a modulus for this. They are really useful for loops of this nature... ie:

<?
$nextday = time();

$row_length = 3;
$current_day = 1;

for($i = 0; $i < 28; $i++, $current_day++, $nextday += 86400) {
if( ($i % $row_length) == 0) {
print "<tr>";
}

print "<td align='center'>Day $current_day: " . gmdate("j M Y", $nextday) . "</td>";

if( ($i % $row_length) == ($row_length - 1) ) {
print "</tr>";
}
}

?>

</table>

Good luck...

Anon

Sorry about the lack of indentation... It was lined up when I posted it. 🙂

It must have eaten them.

angela-sw-uk

Thanks for the reply ... I shall go off and try all that now.

You said "interesting approach" ... as I said, it was my first attempt at a php script, so the method just followed the way my brain was thinking, which of course results in unorthodox approaches 🙂

I wrote the code just to see if I could do a loop; then added the table just to see if I could achieve it.

If you have a better/cleaner way of achieving this then let me know as I am eager to learn 'proper methods'

🙂

Thanking you very much for your prompt, clear, documented answer which will benefit greatly my further understanding of php

🙂

Regards
Angela
(United Kingdom)

Anon

Sorry. 🙂 I did not mean for that to sound condescending in any way... I actually meant what I said... It was a good idea... one which I had never thought of. It is not quite as flexible as using the modulus method, but it is still a good method nonetheless... Good luck, Angela.