is this how you do it? question with sort?

cornercuttinjoe

im fairly new to php. actually, this is the first project that i have ever done in php, so im learning as i go here, and while the web and some books have been a lot of help, i have come to a problem that i am not sure how to solve.

the problem is something like this:

im starting to understand the power of php, and since php can generate the html code, i know that you can create many pages from one page of php. so im working on a database site, and im about done with all of the admin control pages, and i want to create a page to view all of the current users.

i understand how to get data from the database and display it, thats easy. my question is, say i have all of this data, say user name, first name, and last name, and i want to display all of these columns. now if i want to be able to sort by any of these columns, what do i do so that i am not creating a page for sorting the user name, a page for sorting the first name, and a page for sorting the last name?

im guessing that i should just create functions that do all of these, and put them all in the same page, then just wait for the user clicks and call the right function. basically, it will just be a decent sized php script with 3 or 6 functions, a function for sorting alphabetically or in reverse alphabetical order for each column.

something like this:
<?php

function alphabet_user_name()
{
...
}

function reverse_user_name()
{
...
}

function alphabet_first_name()
{
...
}

//and so on and so forth

?>
<html>
... page code goes here ...
</html>

is my methodology right? since im so new to this, i dont really know the shortcuts, altho im trying to find them. any help would be appreciated. im not too worried about how to do it, im pretty sure i can figure that out. i just want to make sure that im doing this the "right" way, and that im doing it efficiently.

any help would be appreciated. thanks ahead of time.

Kudose

Use either the ORDER BY arguements in MySQL or the [man]sort[/man] functions in PHP.

cornercuttinjoe

yeah, my question isnt about how to actually order. i guess i phrased it wrong.

say i have these three columns, and above each column is a column header, so above the user name column, i have a table header of a column that says "User Name". now if i want the user to be able to click this table header to perform a sort on the table, would i make a hidden field that simply calls the same page, and then passes some data telling it what kind of search to perform.

do you understand my question.

the sorting i understand. its how to somewhat link to the same page and tell it to sort using a different method that i have a question on it.

i may have figured it out, but it will take me a while to figure out what im doing. i will post my code whenever im done, or close to done, to show you what i meant.

thanks for helping man...

Kudose

You can either POST/GET the data with a form, or you can GET them using a link.

i.e.

$sql = "SELECT * FROM table";

if($_GET['sort'] == "a"){
  $direc = "ASC"
} else {
  $direct = "DESC";
}

if($_GET['by'] == "u"){
  $order_by = "username";
} else {
  //you could also use a switch or elseif's
  $order_by = "id";
}

$sql .= " ORDER BY ".$order_by." ".$direct;
$query = mysql_query($sql);
$rows = array();
while($data = mysql_fetch_array($query)){
  $rows[] = $data;
}

//use a link to set the GET variables
echo '<a href="page.php?sort=a&by=u">Username</a>';

//show your data down here
//in example

foreach($rows as $row){
  echo $row['username'].'<br>';
}

I used the latter option in my example.

cornercuttinjoe

YEAH!!

Good. Thats pretty much exactly what I am doing. I am glad to know that im in the right mindset.

I was actually looking into keeping this data in a session, but i am having some trouble getting session stuff to work, and because this site is going to have a very small number of allowable users, probably 20 at most, it wont be bad to keep this data in the URL. im running this on a basic install from red hat, so im not sure what version of php4 im using, although i can look.

i will probably go to sessions later on in the project because it will be more secure than using the cookies im already using, but i need to get a beta version out quickly so it can get tested. so the GET method will do for now.

im really enjoying this. i just graduated from college in computer science, so its nice to be doing stuff that isnt scientific.

thanks a lot for the help. i appreciate it.