allowing users to sort

Anon

We've all seen it somewhere...now I want to learn how to do it.

I have a table, three columns wide with the first row being the types of field elements.

I want to allow a user to sort by any of the three categories.

I know this is probably labor intensive, but could someone steer me in the right direction to a tutorial or something?

rrijnders

Code the column headings as links that call your script with parms passed:
<font color=blue>
<A HREF="<? print $PHP_SELF; ?>?sort=1">COL1 Heading</A>
</font>

Then in your script, check the value of the parm and sort your output accordingly. The easiest way to sort your output (if it is coming from a database) is to use the ORDER BY clause in your SQL to sequence the results by the desired field.

-- Rich

Anon

There are planty of examples out there:

http://www.pbdr.com/jscript/tblsort.htm

Anon

not intensive at all

instead of one sql statement such as

$sql="select * from table order by field1"

you use

if ($sortby==1)

$sql="select * from table order by field1"

elseif ($sortby==2)

$sql="select * from table order by field2"

elseif ($sortby==3)

$sql="select * from table order by field3"

else

$sql="select * from table order by field1"

and in the title of your display table

you put the link as mypage.php?sortby=1, or mypage.php?sortby=2, ...

el_kab0ng wrote:

We've all seen it somewhere...now I want to learn how to do it.

I have a table, three columns wide with the first row being the types of field elements.

I want to allow a user to sort by any of the three categories.

I know this is probably labor intensive, but could someone steer me in the right direction to a tutorial or something?

Anon

As sexy as that is, it has a hard time sorting correctly. I think I'll attempt the db driven sort method. Thanks for your help guys!

tomhath wrote:

There are planty of examples out there:

http://www.pbdr.com/jscript/tblsort.htm

Anon

ok...this method seems easy enough...but I have a problem now.

First off, I am allowing users to select an option from a drop down, which gets passed to the display page using the variable $sel_record. When sorting, this variable gets flushed. How to do keep it active?

Here's the code I'm using:

if ($sortby == 1)

$sql="select * from validated where added ='$sel_record' order by user ASC";

elseif ($sortby == 2)

$sql="select * from validated where added ='$sel_record' order by added ASC";

elseif ($sortby == 3)

$sql="select * from validated where added ='$sel_record' order by quote ASC";

else
$sql = "select * from validated where added ='$sel_record' order by added ASC";
$connection = mysql_connect($default->db_host, $default->db_user, $default->db_pass)
or die ("Couldn't connect to server.");
$db = mysql_select_db($default->db, $connection)
or die ("Couldn't select database.");
$sql_result = mysql_query($sql);
if (!$sql_result) {
echo "<table width=$default->table_width border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"2\" cellpadding=\"2\" align=\"center\">
<tr>
<td align=\"center\">$lang_err_lambs</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>";
} else {
$row = mysql_fetch_array($sql_result);
$added = $row["added"];
$timestmp = strtotime("$added");
$datestr = date("F - Y", $timestmp);
mysql_close($connection);
echo "
<br>
$lang_display_url || $lang_view_url
<p>
<div align=\"center\"><font class=\"pn-title\">Quotes for: $datestr</font></div>
<br>
<table width=\"90%\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"1\" bgcolor=\"$default->td_header_color\">
<tr>
<td valign=\"top\">
<table border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"1\" cellpadding=\"3\" width=\"100%\" NAME=\"A\" ID=\"A\">
<tr>
<td align=\"center\" width=\"5%\" bgcolor=\"$default->td_header_color\"><font class=\"pn-title2\">Rank</font></td>
<td align=\"center\" width=\"10%\" bgcolor=\"$default->td_header_color\"><font class=\"pn-title2\"><a href=\"$default->quote_root_url/display.php?sortby=1\">User</a></font></td>
<td align=\"center\" width=\"15%\" bgcolor=\"$default->td_header_color\"><font class=\"pn-title2\"><a href=\"$default->quote_root_url/display.php?sortby=2\">Added</a></font></td>
<td width=\"70%\" bgcolor=\"$default->td_header_color\"><font class=\"pn-title2\"><a href=\"$default->quote_root_url/display.php?sort=3\">Quote</a></font></td>
</tr>
";