returning results of query into alternating table cells

warzol

Hi again folks! I am not sure if I should start posting this stuff in the coding section or if this is considered newbie stuff still. Anyway, I am pulling results from a query into my page & am trying to get the results into a table that is 2 columns wide. I am also alternating the background color from row to row. I can get the results to alternate the background using the ternary operator, but am having trouble getting the records to echo correctly. It is obviously easy to get the records to just show a single record in each table row, but getting it to show 2 in one row & then continue on in the next row seems trickier.

Here is where I am at so far:

$bg = '#EEEEEE'; //set background color
							  while ($row = mysql_fetch_array ($result)) 
							  { $bg = ($bg=='#EEEEEE' ? '#FFFFFF' : '#EEEEEE'); //switch background color
							  	print '<table width="568" cellpadding="2">
							  			<tr>
											<td width="284" bgcolor="' .$bg. '">' .$row[subtype_name]. '</td>
											<td width="284" bgcolor="' .$bg. '">' .$row[subtype_name]. '</td>
										</tr>'; }

Obviously the problem here is that I am repeating the same result in both cells of each row before it loops and moves to the next result. I am sure I have to use some kind of count and or if loop, but am not sure where to begin. Any help would be awesome! Thanks!

Houdini

Maybe you could do this instead.

$bg = '#EEEEEE'; //set background color
 $bg1 = '#FFFFFF' //swap background color
 print '<table width="568" cellpadding="2">';
	while ($row = mysql_fetch_array ($result))
    	{ 
    	print'  

        <tr>
        <td width="284" bgcolor="' .$bg. '">' .$row[subtype_name]. '</td>
        <td width="284" bgcolor="' .$bg1. '">' .$row[subtype_name]. '</td>
        </tr>'; }

warzol

True, that is another good approach to adjusting the colors, but I am actually more trying to figure out the problem of trying to get the actual results to not be duplicated 🙂 For example when I try this code, I get the following setup for my table:

subtype 1 subtype 1
subtype 2 subtype 2
subtype 3 subtype 3
etc...

I am actually trying to get it to do this:

subtype 1 subtype 2
subtype 3 subtype 4
subtype 5 subtype 6
etc...

Sorry, hopefully that is a little better explanation. Thanks for the idea on the colors though, I may use that method. 🙂

Crowly

Try this:

$bg = '#EEEEEE'; //set background color 
$bg1 = '#FFFFFF'; //swap background color 
print '<table width="568" cellpadding="2">'; 
$i=0;
$x=0;
$y=1;
    while ($row = mysql_fetch_array ($result)) 
        { 
        if ($i==$x) {
          print'<tr>';  

          print'<td width="284" bgcolor="' .$bg. '">' .$row[subtype_name]. '</td>';
          $x++;
          $x++; 
        }
        if ($i==$y) { 
          print'<td width="284" bgcolor="' .$bg1. '">' .$row[subtype_name]. '</td> 
          </tr>';
          $y++;
          $y++;
        }
        $i++;
        }

Houdini

Try this out

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array ($result)) 
    { 

    if ($i&1) { // this will happen on 1,3,5,7,9,.... 
      print'<tr>';   
      print'<td width="284" bgcolor="' .$bg. '">' .$row['navn']. '</td>'; 
	} 
    else { // this will happen on 2,4,6,8,....... 
      print'<td width="284" bgcolor="' .$bg1. '">' .$row['navn']. '</td> 
      </tr>';
	} 
	$i++;//increment after the loop
}

Crowly

Houdini wrote:

Try this out

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array ($result)) 
    { 

    if ($i&1) { // this will happen on 1,3,5,7,9,.... 
      print'<tr>';   
      print'<td width="284" bgcolor="' .$bg. '">' .$row['navn']. '</td>'; 
	} 
    else { // this will happen on 2,4,6,8,....... 
      print'<td width="284" bgcolor="' .$bg1. '">' .$row['navn']. '</td> 
      </tr>';
	} 
	$i++;//increment after the loop
}

Just a little note, remember to set $i=1, not $i=0 as in my example above with this method 🙂 The table will look a bit funny if you start at 0.

warzol

Cool, both of those solutions work. I understand how Crowly's works, although it took me a minute to work through the loop to figure out how. Pretty slick making it skip over one each time. Houdini's I like because it is a bit shorter, but am wondering about something.

I am still new to this so forgive my ignorance. How does the "(i&1)" work? I have never used the "&" before. The only time I have seen it was when it was used as AND by using "&&". Never seen a single one before. It obviously isn't the same as an = since the loop wouldn't quite work correctly. It seems to be the difference on whether it echos them in the second column or not, so seems like a useful thing and would be helpful to know what it does. Thanks fellas(?)!

Houdini

The single &1 is the bit wise operator. and using it like this basically shifts the bits by one, so that every other time the count is incremented it wil be true that the $i and 1 are set to one or 1. I will attempt to show it in binary
00000001 (one)
00000010 (two)
00000011 (three)
00000100 (four)
00000101 (five)
00000110 (six)
00000111 (seven)
00001000 (eight)
00001001 (nine)
00001010 (ten)
00001011 (eleven)
00001100 (twelve)
00001101 (thirteen)
00001110 (fourteen)
00001111 (fifteen) and so on, but as you can see the one bit which is the right most bit toggles with each increment of the count (which is incremented by one).Does that help to make it more clear as to how the &1 works to alternate rows. 🆒