How to create a table from api data - php

Question

I have been working on this for awhile and I am maybe making this more difficult than it is. Any shared knowledge would be very much appreciated.
My code calls data using an API, I was able to display it as a ordered list but I wanted to make it more presentable using a table format.
Ideally I the results to be displayed grouped by day.
Below is what I have created so far, but it is not outputting anything currently:
echo "<table>";
echo "<tr>";
echo "<th>Date</th>";
echo "<th>Number of Asteroids</th>";
echo "</tr>";
echo "<tr>";
foreach ($near_earth_object->close_approach_data as $close_approach) {
echo "<td>" . $close_approach->close_approach_date . "</td>";
foreach ($data->near_earth_objects as $date => $count) {
echo"<td>" . sizeof($count) . "</td></tr>";
}
}
echo "<tr>";
echo "<th>Asteroid Name</th>";
echo "<th>Asteroid Size</th>";
echo "<th>Velocity</th>";
echo "<th>Passing Earth By</th>";
echo "</tr>";
echo "<tr>";
foreach ($data->near_earth_objects->$date as $near_earth_object) {
echo "<td>" . $near_earth_object->name . " <a href='" . $near_earth_object->nasa_jpl_url . "'>" . $near_earth_object->nasa_jpl_url . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $near_earth_object->estimated_diameter->meters->estimated_diameter_min . " metres</td>";
}
foreach ($near_earth_object->close_approach_data as $close_approach) {
echo "<td>" . $close_approach->relative_velocity->kilometers_per_hour . " km/h " . "</td><td>". $close_approach->miss_distance->kilometers . " km</td></tr> ";
}
echo"</table>";

Answer 1

You should avoid echoing HTML code whenever possible. You can use PHP Short tags <?= and ?> to inject PHP into your HTML code. This line
echo "<td>" . $close_approach->close_approach_date . "</td>";
can then be changed to
<td><?=$close_approach->close_approach_date?></td>
Furthermore I don't see any PHP opening and closing tags (<?php and ?>) to start and end your PHP code (although this may just be lacking in your example)
You're only looping through your table data <td> tags not your table row <tr> tags. You have to include these in your loop to keep creating a new table rows for every item in your loop:
foreach ($near_earth_object->close_approach_data as $close_approach) {
echo "<tr>";
Finally, PHP offers an alternative syntax for control structures. Check out the PHP documentation
PHP offers an alternative syntax for some of its control structures; namely, if, while, for, foreach, and switch. In each case, the basic form of the alternate syntax is to change the opening brace to a colon (:) and the closing brace to endif;, endwhile;, endfor;, endforeach;, or endswitch;, respectively.
You can use this to improve your existing code:
foreach ($data->near_earth_objects->$date as $near_earth_object) {
echo "<td>" . $near_earth_object->name . " <a href='" . $near_earth_object->nasa_jpl_url . "'>" . $near_earth_object->nasa_jpl_url . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $near_earth_object->estimated_diameter->meters->estimated_diameter_min . " metres</td>";
}
And turn it into something like this
foreach ($data->near_earth_objects->$date as $near_earth_object): ?>
<td><?=$near_earth_object->name?> <a href='<?=$near_earth_object->nasa_jpl_url?>'><?=$near_earth_object->nasa_jpl_url?></td>
<td><?=$near_earth_object->estimated_diameter->meters->estimated_diameter_min?> metres</td>
<? endforeach; ?>

Answer 2

I recommend creating the table as you'd like to see it just with HTML and then using PHP to dynamically populate it. What may help is, rather than having PHP echo all of the HTML, just use PHP to populate the data (i.e., separate data from display). Just as an example taken from here:
<?php foreach ($things as $thing): ?>
<li><?php echo $thing; ?></li>
<?php endforeach; ?>