How to display certain results

[Anon]

Hi,

I am fairly new to PHP, but picking up some ideas fairly quickly. I have a site that is completely PHP driven and works real well, but now I need some help optimizing one area.

In one section, I am search for results and putting thumbnails into table. I want to have four thumbnails per table row. Below is how I did it, very ugly. Kinda works. Is there a better way?

You can see the page in work at:

http://baby.brynteson.info/pics.php

Thanks and if you need more source code, I'll send the entire file.

Thanks again,

Richard

---

$result = mysql_query("SELECT FROM pics where pictype = '$pictype' order by id LIMIT 0, 4",$db);
$result2 = mysql_query("SELECT FROM pics where pictype = '$pictype' order by id LIMIT 4, 4",$db);
$result3 = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM pics where pictype = '$pictype' order by id LIMIT 8, 4",$db);
printf("<div style='POSITION: absolute; TOP: 125px; LEFT: 75px; Z-INDEX: 25; WIDTH: 500px'>\n");

  printf("<TABLE border='1' cellspacing='2' cellpadding='2'>
  	<TR>
  		<TD colspan='9' bgcolor='#d62261'>
  		<FONT COLOR='#ffffff' SIZE='-1' FACE='Verdana'>Pictures</font>
  		</TD>
  	</TR>
  	<tr>
  \n");

while ($myrow = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {

printf("
	<td BGCOLOR='#ffffff'>
	<center>
	<a href=\"pics.php?id=%s\"><img src='images/%s'><br>
	%s
	</center>
	</a>
	</td>

\n", $myrow["id"], $myrow["thumbname"], $myrow["short"]);

}

printf("</tr><tr>\n");

while ($myrow2 = mysql_fetch_array($result2)) {

printf("
	<td BGCOLOR='#ffffff'>
	<center>
	<a href=\"pics.php?id=%s\"><img src='images/%s'><br>
	%s
	</center>
	</a>
	</td>

\n", $myrow2["id"], $myrow2["thumbname"], $myrow2["short"]);

}

printf("</tr><tr>\n");

while ($myrow3 = mysql_fetch_array($result3)) {

printf("
	<td BGCOLOR='#ffffff'>
	<center>
	<a href=\"pics.php?id=%s\"><img src='images/%s'><br>
	%s
	</center>
	</a>
	</td>

\n", $myrow3["id"], $myrow3["thumbname"], $myrow3["short"]);

}

[Anon]

Mm. and as soon as you have nine thumbnails to display you're stuck, aren't you? :-)

We can get the queries down to one, and instead use a loop to build the table. This has the advantage that the table will grow as the number of thumbnails increases.

$result=mysql_query="SELECT..without the LIMIT clause..";

<table>
...table header row...
<?php
$column=1; //Columns will be numbered 1..4
while ($myrow = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
if($column==1) // Starting a new row
{
echo "<tr>";
}
echo "<td>...thumbnail stuff...</td>";
$column++; //Next column
if($column==5) // Oops, off the end of the row, so...
{
echo "</tr>"; //...finish the row...
$column=1; // ...ready to start a new one.
}
} // elihw
if($column!=1) // Last row wasn't finished.
{
echo str_repeat("<td></td>",4-$column); //Pad with empty cells
echo "</tr>"; // and finish the row.
}
?>
</table>

Hope that works out for you. I haven't tested it at all, so you might need to tweak it a tad to get it perfect.

[Anon]

a simpler way would be

$cols_needed = 5;
$cols_printed = 0;
print("<table><tr>");
//Your query stuff goes here

while($row = mysql_fetch_row($mysql_result))
{
if($cols_printed == $cols_needed)
{
print("</tr><tr>");
$cols_printed == 0;
}
else
{
print("<td><img src=\"yada yada\"></td>");
$cols_printed++;
}

PS. Replace $mysql_result whith your string name for your result.

Hope this helps

[Anon]

... and lose every (cols_needed-1)th item.

[Anon]

Grumbler & Juschilin,

Thanks for the info. It worked great. I never had that problem with reaching a max, because I kept adding to it when I go more. My all pics had over 20 SQL Statements.

I was able to reduce the page from over 800 lines of code to a little over 200.

Thanks for the help,

Richard