[Resolved] PHP code leaving lots of whitespace in html document.

[whoisKeel]

<form method="post" action="do_add.php" name="myForm">
<table>
<?php
include('connection.php');

if (!($fp = fopen("tabledata.dat", "r")))
        exit("Unable to open the input file.");
    while (!feof($fp))
    {
      $buffer = fscanf($fp, "%s %s %d", $name[], $type[], $length[]);
    }
    fclose($fp);

$whichTable = $name[0];

for ($i=2; $i < count($name); $i++)
{
   if($type[$i] == 'TEXT')
   {
      echo '<tr><td valign="top">'.$name[$i].'</td><td><input type="text" name="add[]" size="30" /><br />&nbsp;</td></tr>';
   }
   else if($type[$i])
   {
      echo '<tr><td valign="top">'.$name[$i].'</td><td><input type="text" name="add[]" size="'.$length[$i].'" maxlength="'.$length[$i].'" /><br />&nbsp;</td></tr><br />';
   }

echo ']" value="';echo $name[$i]; echo '" />';
}

mysql_close($connection);

?>
</table>
<input type="submit" value="Add" /></form>

this is leaving white space at the top of my html document. what to do?

[paulnaj]

It might be to do with the FORM tag.

I usually put the FORM tag in between the TABLE tag and the first TR ...

<table>
<form>
<tr>
... td's etc
</tr>

... more tr's etc

<tr>
... td's etc
</tr>
</form>
</table>

Paul.

[whoisKeel]

hmmm...well that's bad practice 🙂 i wouldn't be surprised if some browsers didn't recognize the form tag at all, and it certainly wouldn't validate.

but i tried it nonetheless, and it didn't work.

any other suggestions? i might just throw the whole page into a div wrapper and position it at the top.

[whoisKeel]

ok, the wrapper doesn't seem to work either. the more fields in the table, the more white space is added, so i can't set a specific pixel on it.

???

[move3rd]

css?

form{display: inline; margin: 0; padding: 0;}

From what I've seen paulnaj's solution also works/validates.

[paulnaj]

Look at the resulting source ... paste a row up to the forum if you can't see the problem.

Paul.

PS. Why is what I said earlier 'bad practice'? ... Surely no worse than leaving out the TBODY tag or putting <br />'s in a TD.

[whoisKeel]

Because you can't put anything inside of a table that isn't within a <td></td>

I've never heard it to be bad practice to put a <br /> INSIDE a td.

And if you look at the code, you can see i put a <br /> outside </td></tr> which is where my problem came from...so it's fixed. another reason not put put tags outside of <td>'s...very unpredictable 🙂

[paulnaj]

It's all rather subjective, what's bad practice and what's not.

There is nothing in HTML 4.0 that insists on where the form tag is placed as long as the containment hierarchy is correctly defined.

What standard are you coding for?

If you're coding for valid XHTML, then probably best to let people know in your first post.

Having seen this ...

  echo '<tr><td valign="top">'.$name[$i].'</td><td><input type="text" name="add[]" size="30" /><br />& nbsp ;</td></tr>';

... in your code, with the space-filling <br />& nbsp ; that would be considered by purists as 'bad' practice, I wasn't sure.

For me it's what works and what doesn't, and what standard I'm coding for. For HTML 4.0, my solution is fine.

EDIT ... the & nbsp ; 's weren't showing up in my post ... hence a minor confusion.