[RESOLVED] Advise on sorting table data!?

[godzilla74]

Hi everyone! I just got done reading this great book on PHP. Now I am working on a presentable product database for end-users to look through. I want to give them the ability to sort the product table instead of having to stick with its default presentation (whatever order it is in the SQL database), and this is where I am stuck!

I have 3 links in my products.php file:
'Sort By SKU', 'Sort By Price', 'Sort By Category' and I would like each of these to do exactly that to the current product page when clicked. So when the page refreshes it has the new sort done. Below these links is the dynamically generated product table.

Is this possible? I have been reading about $_GET, but wasn't sure if this was the route to take or if there was a way to do something else that my book didn't go through. Is this an opportunity to pass a variable in the URL like www.foo.com/products&sort=price or something along those lines?

Any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks!!

[wilku]

Yes. $GET is the way to go. Something on the lines of:

$order = (isset($_GET['order']))?$_GET['order']:'default';
switch ($order)
{
 case 'sku':
   $o = 'ORDER BY sku';
   break;
 case 'price':
   $o = 'ORDER BY price';
   break;
 case 'category':
   $o = 'ORDER BY category';
   break;
 default:
   $o = '';
   break;
}
$sql = 'SELECT * FROM yourtable WHERE whatever '.$o;

[bpat1434]

Well, to be even more in-depth about it, you would probably want to use two $_GET variables (or a flag within the first one):

URL: page.php?sort=price&order=desc

$orderby = '';

$order = (isset($_GET['sort']) && !empty($_GET['sort'])) ? $_GET['sort'] : 'price';
$ord = (isset($_GET['order']) && !empty($_GET['order'])) ? $_GET['order'] : 'ASC';

switch($order)
{
    case 'price':
        $orderby .= ' ORDER BY price';
        break;
    case 'sku':
        $orderby .= ' ORDER BY sku';
        break;
    case 'category':
        $orderby .= ' ORDER BY category';
        break;
    default:
        $orderby .= ' ORDER BY price';
        break;
}

$orderby .= ($ord == 'ASC') ? ' ASC' : ' DESC';

$query = "SELECT *
FROM `table`
" . $orderby;

That way users can then elect to sort by price, category, or sku either ascending or descending.

[godzilla74]

Wow! Thanks for the help. Both of them worked! I tweaked the results a little to suit my pages needs and we are rockin' and rollin'!!

Thanks!