How to echo a table in two piece separated code in PHP? - php

Question

Now I wish to construct a list of tables under nested while loop and if-else condition with PHP, the format of the code is as below:
while(){
if (){
..... // extract the data
while(){
construct a table using the data extracted above
}
}
elseif (){
..... // extract the data
while(){
construct a table using the data extracted above
}
}
}
Specifically, in the inner while loop the code is:
while ( $chat = mysqli_fetch_assoc($chatQ))
{
echo
"<table class='table table-hover' >"
."<td>"
.$conver['sender_name']."\t".$chat['sender']."\t".$chat['send_time']."\t".$chat['content']
."</td>"
."<td>"
."<form id='join' action='group_chat.php' method ='POST' accept-charset='UTF-8'>"
// post the group id
."<input type='hidden' name='group_id' id='group_id' value=".$conver['sender_id']."/>"
."<button class='btn btn-default' type='submit'>Enter</button>"
."</form>"
."</td>"
."</table>";
}
But the result is very ugly:
The problem is that the Enter button is associated with each message. But what I want is that after displaying all the messages, there is a Enter button which can direct to the specific group. But I don't know how to separate the code. Could you please do me a favor? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You can do something like this:
<?php
$counter = 0;
echo '
<form>
<table>';
while ( $chat = mysqli_fetch_assoc($chatQ)){
$counter++;
echo '
<tr>
<td>
group_id_'.$counter.'
</td>
<td>
<input name="group_id_'.$counter.'" value="'.$conver['sender_id'].'">
</td>
</tr>';
}
echo '
<tr>
<td colspan="2">
<button type="submit">Enter</button>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>';
?>
Also you dont have to limit yourself to echo everything in order by setting variables. See example below:
<?php
$counter = 0;
$data = NULL;
while ( $chat = mysqli_fetch_assoc($chatQ)){
$counter++;
$data .='
<tr>
<td>
group_id_'.$counter.'
</td>
<td>
<input name="group_id_'.$counter.'" value="'.$conver['sender_id'].'">
</td>
</tr>';
}
echo '
<form>
<table>'.$data.'
<tr>
<td colspan="2">
<button type="submit">Enter</button>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>';
?>