Splitting Long php generated HTML table? - php

Question

I use a MySql query to select data from my DB and then print it in the form of a HTML Table. It works perfectly, fine but sometimes the table consists of hundreds of rows and the webpage looks incredibly akward. Is there a way to split the table side by side into 2 or 3 halves.
Present Output
Desired output
PHP
<?php
....
echo "<h3>Classes attended :</h3>";
echo "<table class='dates' border='1'>";
foreach ($results as $dates) {
echo "<tr><td width='50%'>";
echo $dates->db_date;
echo "</td>";
echo "<td width='50%'>";
echo $dates->day_name;
echo "</td>";
echo "</tr>";
}
echo "</table>";
?>
What would be the best way to achieve it?
Help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

You can use PHP to determine in your loop if the loop index is divisible by a certain number using something like this:
echo "<h3>Classes attended :</h3>";
echo "<table class='dates' border='1'>";
$rowCount = 1;
$numRows = count($results);
$maxRows = 12;
foreach ($results as $dates) {
echo "<tr><td width='50%'>";
echo $dates->db_date;
echo "</td>";
echo "<td width='50%'>";
echo $dates->day_name;
echo "</td>";
echo "</tr>";
if($rowCount % $maxRows == 0 && $rowCount != $numRows) {
echo "</table><table class='dates' border='1'>";
}
$rowCount ++;
}
echo "</table>";
That's the basics of doing this. Basically in your loop you're testing each index to see if it's divisible by $maxRows, and if so then you're going to close your table and open a new one. You'll have to add the styling to place the tables side by side.
If you wanted to expand upon this concept you can set $maxRows to be an evaluation of $numRows. For instance if you wanted to split the items as close as possible to half in order to show just two tables, you could do... $numRows = count($results); $maxRows = round($numRows / 2);

Answer 2

Inspired by Robert Wade's answer:
<?php
....
echo "<h3>Classes attended :</h3>";
$i=0;
$maxRows=10;
foreach ($results as $dates) {
$a=$i/$maxRows == 0 ? "<table class='dates' border='1'>":"";
$b=$i/$maxRows == 0 ? "</table>":"";
echo $a;
echo "<tr><td width='50%'>";
echo $dates->db_date;
echo "</td>";
echo "<td width='50%'>";
echo $dates->day_name;
echo "</td>";
echo "</tr>";
echo $b;
$i++;
}
?>
At last, add some css style to the tables.

Answer 3

You can also use array_chunk() for splitting your results. Or instead of displaing a lot of tables next to each other you can make pagination and get only some range in your query. For example:
SELECT * FROM `clients` LIMIT 5, 10
Selects 10 rows beggining from row 5. Now, when you change your page, just change limit values.