Alphabetic anchors (navigation)

rbanke

I have done a few searches and cant find exactly what im looking for (maybe i have the wrong name). basically here is what im trying to accomplish. I have a list of names that i pull from a mysql db and I would like to have a bar of letters along the top that link to anchors for each letter down the page. The letter nav bar on the top is no problem, what is a problem, is dynamically generating the anchors at the beginning of each new name/new letter. Is this something i should put into the mysql table, or does it belong in php? Any direction would be great.
thanks
-Rich

Edit: change wording of my question.

LoganK

Something in PHP most likely....in each of your foreach or while loops, add something that says (this is psuedo-code) "if the capitalized first-letter of the current name is equal to a new letter, write an anchor in". You'd probably want to use an array with all of the letters of the alphabet.

BTW, you have a badly wordly question. You wrote "Is this something I can put into the table?", which is a yes/no question. I could've easily replied with "No", and, while still being correct, absolutely no help at all. Kind of like Microsoft tech support 😃

dfr574

You can try this. .. I'm sure there are a million betters ways of doing it, but this should get you started.

$result = mysql_query("SELECT name FROM TBL");

$check = 0;

while($get_results = mysql_fetch_row($result)){
foreach($get_results as $name)
$first = $name{0};

if($first != $check){
echo "<a name=\"$first\">$first</a>";
}
echo $name;

$check = $first;

}

LoganK

That'll always evalutate to true, since no letter is equal to 0. The first character of the name is not 0, and since $check == 0, your if statement will always evaluate to true.

dfr574

That's correct, the first time it enters the loop.

rbanke

TY for the replies, it gives me a good starting point.

LoganK

Didn't see that last line...even senior members make mistakes sometimes 😃

rbanke, remember to mark the thread as resolved!