Viewing all of table with php and mysql - php

Question

So, I have pretty limited knowledge when it comes to mysql. Usually when dealing with content on our site, I'm used to loading it from expressionengine, our cms, which I know fine. But recently I have to update this page that loads its data directly from our database. I took a course on mysql a while back, but I still don't really know how to use it.
The page doesn't need to use too much information, its basically just a list of awards presented to different businesses. I assume the table on the database just has a column for Business name, City, Year, and Type of award won. Stuff like that.
Now accessing the database doesn't seem like it would be too hard, and I feel like I could google around and find what I need. But to get started, I would just like to see the actual table! Why is it so complicated of a procedure to do?
The code on the file that I'm working on was set up like this to access the database:
$user_name = "xxxxxxxxxx";
$password = "xxxxxxxxxx";
$server = "xxxxxxxxxx";
$database = "xxxxxxxxxx";
$conni = new mysqli($server, $user_name, $password, $database);
if (mysqli_connect_errno()) {
printf("<center>
<strong>No connection to database possible!<br />
Please contact us!</strong>
</center>");
exit();
}
I figured out how to view all tables on the database, by doing this:
$result = mysql_query("show tables");
while($table = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
echo($table[0] . "<BR>");
}
So I know the name of the table I'm dealing with. I found a way to see all the column names:
$query = "select * from my_tablename";
$result = mysql_query($query);
$numcolumn = mysql_num_fields($result);
for ( $i = 0; $i < $numcolumn; $i++ ) {
$columnnames = mysql_field_name($result, $i);
echo $columnnames . "<br>";
}
But I still can't find how to just display the table itself. I might be thinking about this wrong, or not have the full idea, but what I want is a simple way to display the entire table, like with an html table. How can that be done?

Answer 1

You can build the <thead> of a table with the column names you have above, however to display the results in a table format, use the mysql_fetch_row function on the $result of SELECT * FROM my_tablename. To reuse the $result after you've got the field names as in your last block, use mysql_data_seek:
mysql_data_seek($result, 0);
And then you can iterate through your results to get the contents of the table:
while ($row = mysql_fetch_row($result)) {
echo '<tr>';
foreach ($row as $value) {
echo '<td>' . $value . '</td>';
}
echo '</tr>';
}
mysql_fetch_row will get a numerically indexed array with where each value is the column value in MySQL, therefore by running foreach you get the value of each column. Put it inside of a <td>, wrap it all in a <tr> and you have yourself a table!
Just for good measure, you should switch to using mysqli in PHP as the mysql_ functions are deprecated in later versions. To switch over, use the PHP documentation to search for the mysql_ functions you're currently using, there will be a pink message which will direct you to the mysqli equivalents