Error populating html table from MySQL database. - php

Question

I am trying to populate my html table using data from my database but each a new row is added to the table, the table shifts downwards. If for example, 38 rows is added to the table, the table becomes invisible. You have to scroll down to see the table. What might the problem be?
echo "
<div class='container'>
<span class='cc' style='font-weight: bold;'>Count: $stat</span></br></br>
<table class='col-md-9' border='1'>
<th>Agent's name</th>
<th>Student's name</th>
<th>Student's number</th>
<th>Accommodation type</th>
<th>School</th>
<th>Date & Time</th>
";
foreach($db->query($select) AS $result){
echo "
<tr><td>{$result['agent_name']}</td>
<td>{$result['student_name']}</td>
<td>{$result['student_number']}</td>
<td>{$result['accommodation']}</td>
<td>{$result['school']}</td>
<td>{$result['contact_date']}</td>
</tr>
</br>
";
}
echo "
</table>
</div>
";

Answer 1

You cannot have <th> directly inside <table>. Please wrap them inside <tr>.
You must get the rows from the foreach in order to get the result rows. The one that you are looping is just the stdObject ResultSet. Change your code to:
$result = $db->query($select)
if (mysqli_num_rows($result) > 0)
while (false != ($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result)))
// Loop here.
Yes, and as others said, a <table> tag can contain only <tbody>, <thead>, <tfoot> and <tr>. Nothing else. There's no tag like </br>. It must be <br />. Brush up the basics of HTML.

Answer 2

Two things:
First, you need to wrap your header elements in a row:
<tr> <!-- here -->
<th>Agent's name</th>
<th>Student's name</th>
<th>Student's number</th>
<th>Accommodation type</th>
<th>School</th>
<th>Date & Time</th>
</tr> <!-- and here -->
Second, what on Earth are these?:
</br>
The browser is probably interpreting them as this:
<br />
Which means you're adding a line break inside your table structure with each row. Which is probably invalid (since it's outside the table cell and part of the table itself), but probably also why each row pushes the display down a little further. Remove that from your loop.
As it stands the code is generating invalid table markup, so styling and rendering the table is going to be somewhat undefined and possibly different for each browser.

Answer 3

You need to wrap you <th></th> in <tr></tr> too,
That's indeed the case.
Second of all, I will advice not using echo in this case. Here is what the code looks like the way I would do it:
<div class='container'>
<span class='cc' style='font-weight: bold;'><?php Count: $stat ?></span></br></br>
<table class='col-md-9' border='1'>
<tr>
<th>Agent's name</th>
<th>Student's name</th>
<th>Student's number</th>
<th>Accommodation type</th>
<th>School</th>
<th>Date & Time</th>
</tr>
<?php
foreach($db->query($select) AS $result):
?>
<tr>
<td><?=$result['agent_name']?></td>
<td><?=$result['student_name']?></td>
<td><?=$result['student_number']?></td>
<td><?=$result['accommodation']?></td>
<td><?=$result['school']?></td>
<td><?=$result['contact_date']?></td>
</tr>
</br>
<?php
endif;
?>
</table>
</div>
This would be the code I would prefer because you'll keep the HTML colors in your code editor, which makes it easier for others to debug.
Little explanation:
<?= and ?> are easy to use open and close tags to echo a variable within HTML.