Maybe a dumb question

[Norway]

Hi, my first post

I have a page that displays the output from a DB table to an HTML Table. Which works fine. But, I want to be able to sort the data by clicking in the column headings.

I can see that all I need to do to achieve this is change the SQL statement to sort by the column name, but what is the best method of doing this within the page? Will I have to reload it and pass it a new value for the $query variable? if so what method do I use to do this?

Help would be great!!

Norway

[philhale]

What I do is call the same application with a ?sort=n command. Then, when generating my $query statement, I use an IF statement. If sort = "" then default to a standard query, otherwise, if sort=1, add a "ORDER BY Name" or if sort=2, add a "ORDER BY Desc", etc.

Hope this helps!

Phil.

[Norway]

Well I don't know if I understand you absolutely. I now have a code like this

...

if (sort==1) {
     $query = "SELECT * FROM myTable order by title";
}
else {
     $query = "SELECT * FROM myTable order by ID";
};

...

In the url I print test.php?sort=1

But still it orders it by the ID. I'm new to php, so maybe it is just that I dont understand some elementary concepts here.

Any help on this would be good.

Norway

[rIkLuNd]

Try this:

if ($_GET['sort'] == 1)
{
     $query = "SELECT * FROM myTable ORDER BY title";
}
else
{
     $query = "SELECT * FROM myTable ORDER BY ID";
}

You must use one of the global variables like $_GET or $HTTP_GET_VARS to get the $sort variable from the url, unless register_globals is on. then you can use this code:

if ($sort == 1)
{
     $query = "SELECT * FROM myTable ORDER BY title";
}
else
{
     $query = "SELECT * FROM myTable ORDER BY ID";
}

[Norway]

Thanks, this was really great. I have been wondering about this for a week, but now I have a sollution.

This forum rocks🆒

Norway

[philipolson]

How about something more like:

$sortable = array('id', 'name', 'date', 'color');

$sort = strtolower($_GET['sort']);
if (!in_array($sort, $sortable)) {
    $sort = 'id';
}

$sql = "SELECT foo FROM bar ORDER BY $sort";

if (!empty($_GET['desc'])) {
    $sql .= " DESC";
}

if (!$result = mysql_query($sql)) {
    print "Could not run query ($sql) : " . mysql_error();
}

It can get more complex and I've not fully thought out the logic in the above example but it should provide some ideas. Guess what the following urls will do:

http://www.example.com/a.php?sort=name&desc=1
http://www.example.com/a.php?sort=name
http://www.example.com/a.php?sort=woah&desc=1

[philhale]

Nice touch. Good, clean, concise, and easy to read code.

Phil.