Table striping

joad

Have googled etc, but seem to be getting confused. Does anyone know how to do it, so that table rows automatically colour / stripe, without any js please? Even when deleting or adding rows?

(If anyone here does private paid work, please pm me).

Any help much appreciated.

Joad.

Weedpacket

The simplest approach is to use CSS. A PHP-based approach is mentioned in [thread=10235043]this forum's FAQ[/thread].

joad

Thank you very much, will take a look.

joad

I assume js isn't needed?

joad

There's no sql linked to any of my tables, so from what I can see, this doesn't help? Am I right?

NogDog

From a PHP viewpoint, without an inkling of what your code looks like to generate the table in question, it's difficult for us to answer. If the table rows are generated via some sort of loop (whether it's reading rows from the DB or a foreach() on an array), the general principle is to increment a counter variable on each loop, and use modulus arithmetic with the "%" operator to determine if it's an odd or even row, and assign the desired html/css class or explicit styling as desired.

Alternatively, you could use the CSS method weedpacket linked to above.

Bonesnap

Just a quick note: While I definitely agree that the CSS solution is the best one, note it will only work in IE9 and above. IE8 and under do not support CSS3 (which :nth-child is).

Also if you are outputting the rows via a loop in PHP and using the % method, note that the rows will not "recolour" themselves if you add or delete rows, unless you are reloading the page and going through the loop again.

joad

Thanks for some of the useful replies, the table is just a common old html table, no db's involved anywhere, but constantly deleting and adding new rows.

Weedpacket

Well, whether there is a database involved or not is irrelevant - it would be the same problem either way: how to add striping to an HTML table.

joad

Yep, I thought the db linking was irrelevant as well, but as you can see I was asked about this in earlier posts. I will probably go the pure css route.

dalecosp

NogDog;11047715 wrote:
From a PHP viewpoint, without an inkling of what your code looks like to generate the table in question, it's difficult for us to answer. If the table rows are generated via some sort of loop (whether it's reading rows from the DB or a foreach() on an array), the general principle is to increment a counter variable on each loop, and use modulus arithmetic with the "%" operator to determine if it's an odd or even row, and assign the desired html/css class or explicit styling as desired.

Alternatively, you could use the CSS method weedpacket linked to above.

Hehe, I find this situation a good way to play with PHP's truthy/falsy:

$odd = true;

while ($something) {

   $odd = !$odd;  // "What is truth?" -- Pontius Pilate, Francis Bacon, and probably most of the $Opposition_party.

   if ($odd) print_a_colored_line();
   else print_a_white_line();
}

sneakyimp

joad;11047849 wrote:
Thanks for some of the useful replies, the table is just a common old html table, no db's involved anywhere, but constantly deleting and adding new rows.

I think everyone is assuming that (db or no db) you are using some kind of PHP loop to output the contents of your table. If you are using a PHP loop, then you can keep track of whether a row is odd or even and then alter the HTML output of your PHP script to include an appropriate CSS class to distinguish odd rows from even rows.

If you are not using a PHP loop to output the table and you just have some big, fat chunk of HTML code to define a <table> then you will have to either
a) manually modify every other row in your HTML to make sure odd/even rows have different styling
b) distill your HTML into some kind of PHP data structure that you can loop through and write some PHP logic that will do the alternating styling for you
c) use JS to apply alternating styling to your HTML table.