Replace mysql field names with user friendly names

Hexxx

I am returning a query from a mysql DB and printing it directly to the screen in an HTML table using PHP. the problem is the field name were stored in shortened form in the mysql db like this:

station_name | viewership_shares | age_gr0_shares | age_gr1_shares | age_gr3_shares

and that isn't too pretty for the end user to be seeing.

Is there anyway to rename the field in a proper way? I can't rename them all manually using an 'as' because it is a large table , with about 50 different attributes and i also want spaces in the heading names.

I would want something like this instead

Pretty name for station_name | Pretty name for viewership_shares | Pretty name for age_gr0_shares | Pretty name for age_gr1_shares | Pretty name for age_gr3_shares

NogDog

Maybe something like this?

<?php
$label = 'age_gr2_shares';
$search = array(
   '/_gr(\d+)_/' => ' group \\1 ',
   '/_/' => ' '
);
echo ucwords(preg_replace(array_keys($search), $search, $label));
?>

leatherback

Create an array where the key is the fieldname in the table, and the value is the lable you want in the table, and use the array to produce your labels:

$labels = array(
'station_name'=>'Pretty name for station_name',
'viewership_shares' => 'Pretty name for viewership_shares');

echo $labels[$colum_name];

Hexxx

NogDog wrote:

Maybe something like this?

<?php
$label = 'age_gr2_shares';
$search = array(
   '/_gr(\d+)_/' => ' group \\1 ',
   '/_/' => ' '
);
echo ucwords(preg_replace(array_keys($search), $search, $label));
?>

That is using regular expressions? I haven't completely read up on that yet. I looked at it a couple times this week and it was too confusing!

NogDog

Hexxx wrote:
That is using regular expressions? I haven't completely read up on that yet. I looked at it a couple times this week and it was too confusing!

Yes. The preg_replace will look for all instances of "gr#" (where # is one or more numerals) and replace them with " group # ", then look for all instances of underscores and replace them with spaces. Then the result is passed to the ucwords() function which will make the first letter of each word upper-case.