[RESOLVED] Altering <TH> within a while-statement

bherman

Retrieving data from a database, i would like to display the data on the website grouped by the Category value (a value stored in the database).

I began to write a separate table for each value of Category, but that's not really sensible since by that way there will be a hell of a lot of redudant code 🙁

There must be a way of changing the <TH> according to the value of the Category while dynamically creating the table, no?

Maybe some kind of iteration throu the Category, writing first one inside the <th> followed by the data whick belongs to the specific category, then on the next iteration the next Category will be printed out inside the <th> and the data belonging to this category and so on.

Have looked at several different codesnippets but nothing comes close to what i need!
Any suggestions??

devinemke

i suggest you use a 2 dimensional array using the categories as the keys and an array of the category members as the values. a simple example:

$result = mysql_query('SELECT * FROM table') or exit(mysql_error());
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
{
 			$array[$row['category']] = $row;
}

echo '<table border="1">';
foreach ($array as $key => $value)
{
 				echo '<tr><th><b>' . $key . '</b></th></tr>';
 				foreach ($value as $subvalue)
 				{
 				 echo '<tr><td>' . print_r($subvalue) . '</td></tr>';
				}
}
echo '</table>';

bherman

devinmke: Thanks for the input, but i'm still left with a problem i am not capable of fixing:
With the code you gave i had to remove print_r since it's output was only numbers and all the text was displayed outside the table....
Anyway, although each Category now shows up as the table header, the output is only one of each items that belongs to each category. Am i making myself understood? English is not my primary language so sometimes i fall through....
I would also like to be able to pick out only certain fields to be displayed, as the table contains more info than should be shown on the webpage. Any tips on how i can pick out only certain fields, as i am unable to figure out your code fully....?

Thanks!

bradgrafelman

Well, to only display certain fields, instead of doing a "SELECT *" in the SQL query, do a "SELECT fieldName1, fieldName2, ..." instead.

Also, to fix the output, try changing this:

                foreach ($value as $subvalue) 
                { 
                 echo '<tr><td>' . print_r($subvalue) . '</td></tr>'; 
                }

to this:

                foreach ($value as $subvalue) 
                { 
                 echo '<tr><td>' . implode(', ', $subvalue) . '</td></tr>'; 
                }

bherman

bradgrafelman wrote:
Well, to only display certain fields, instead of doing a "SELECT *" in the SQL query, do a "SELECT fieldName1, fieldName2, ..." instead.

Yeah, that was a DUH moment for me, realizing that i could do it like that right after i posted....

Also, to fix the output, try changing this:

                foreach ($value as $subvalue) 
                { 
                 echo '<tr><td>' . print_r($subvalue) . '</td></tr>'; 
                }

to this:

                foreach ($value as $subvalue) 
                { 
                 echo '<tr><td>' . implode(', ', $subvalue) . '</td></tr>'; 
                }

Well, what i actually did was just remove print_r and just let ($subvalue) be there all on it's lonesome, that fixed the output.

Thanks for your help guys, i appreciate it! With your help i am now able to finish this 😃