[RESOLVED] Display results in columns

cretam

Hi,
I would like to know how to display results of database fields in columns on my search form ie.
Here is my code:

<form action="publicationlist.php" method="post">
<p><strong><u>Filter by: </u></strong></p>
<label><strong>By author:</strong><br />
<input name="authors" type="text" id="authors" />
</label>
<label>
<input name="Submit" type="submit" id="Submit" value="Go" />
</label>
<br />
<label><strong><br />
<strong>By availability:</strong><br />
<input name="availability" type="text" id="orgs" size="80" />
</label>
<input name="Submit2" type="submit" id="Submit2" value="Go" />
<br />
<br />
<strong>By sector:</strong><br />
</label>
<?php 
	 $cats = @mysql_query('SELECT id, name FROM category order by name asc');
if (!$cats) {
  exit('<p>Error retrieving categories from database!<br />' .
      'Error: ' . mysql_error() . '</p>');
}

while ($cat = mysql_fetch_array($cats)) {
  $id = $cat['id'];
  $name = htmlspecialchars($cat['name']);

  echo "<li><a href='publicationlist.php?cat=$id'>$name</a></li>";
}
?>

</form>

I would like to display the results in columns across the page so the user doesn't have to scroll so much. There are about 70 results in total so maybe 3 or 4 columns. Is there a better way to display the results?

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

Piranha

Please look in this thread to see a solution.

cretam

Thanks for replying to my post. I tried what you suggested but didn't work, and also looked at other threads and also no luck.
When I saw your post, I thought that should work but it gave me funny results. I will keep trying.

cretam

Hi,
I found this code on another forum and it worked for me, thought others should know about it.

 <?php 
	 $cats = @mysql_query('SELECT id, name FROM category order by name asc');
if (!$cats) {
  exit('<p>Error retrieving categories from database!<br />' .
      'Error: ' . mysql_error() . '</p>');
}

// how many columns we want our table to have
$columns = 4;
$i = 0;
echo "<table>\n"; 

while ($cat = mysql_fetch_array($cats)) {
  $id = $cat['id'];
  $name = htmlspecialchars($cat['name']);

if (($i % $columns) == 0) {
   echo " <tr>\n";
}

echo "  <td><a href='publicationlist.php?cat=$id'>" . $cat['name'] . "</a></td>\n";

if (($i % $columns) == ($columns - 1)) {
    echo " </tr>\n";
}

$i++;
}

// find out how many empty <td></td> we need to output now
// to make the html correct and well formed
$remainder = $columns - ($i % $columns);

// do we have remainders?
if ($remainder > 0) {
    echo str_repeat("  <td></td>\n", $remainder);
    echo " </tr>\n";
} 
?>