How can i merge Rows of An HTML table fetched from Mysql - php

Question

I have a MySQL database for a website am building, i have displayed contents of a table in the MySQL database on my page using the PHP code shown below. What i wanted to know was if there was a way to Merge rows of a column with the same value.
note: i don't want the changes to occur in the database but just on the html table displayed on the page
here is the code i used
$arr = array();
while($row = mysql_fetch_row($result)) {
if (empty($arr[$row[0]])) $arr[$row[0]] = array();
$arr[$row[0]] [$row[1]] [$row[2]] [$row[3]] [$row[4]] [$row[5]] [$row[6]][] = $row[7];
}
foreach ($arr as $key => $subordinatearr) {
echo '<tr>';
echo '<td rowspan="', count($subordinatearr), '">', $key, '</td>';
echo '<td>', $subordinatearr[0], '</td>';
echo '<td>', $subordinatearr[1], '</td>';
echo '<td>', $subordinatearr[2], '</td>';
echo '<td>', $subordinatearr[3], '</td>';
echo '<td>', $subordinatearr[4], '</td>';
echo '<td>', $subordinatearr[5], '</td>';
echo '<td>', $subordinatearr[6], '</td>';
if (count($subordinatearr) > 1) {
for ($i = 1; $i < count($subordinatearr); $i++) {
echo '</tr><tr><td>', $subordinatearr[$i], '</td>';
}
}
echo '</tr>';
}

Answer 1

Please change this script to
while($row = mysql_fetch_row($result)) {
echo "<tr>";
echo "<td>".$row['Location']."</td>";
echo "<td>".$row['Vessel ']."</td>";
echo "</tr>";
}

Answer 2

Store the result in an array.
$arr = array();
while($row = mysql_fetch_row($result)) {
if (empty($arr[$row[0]]) $arr[$row[0]] = array();
$arr[$row[0]][] = $row[1];
}
Then put the array using rowspan like as follows:
foreach ($arr as $key => $subordinatearr) {
echo '<tr>';
echo '<td rowspan="', count($subordinatearr), '">', $key, '</td>';
echo '<td>', $subordinatearr[0], '</td>';
if (count($subordinatearr) > 1) {
for ($i = 1; $i < count($subordinatearr); $i++) {
echo '</tr><tr><td>', $subordinatearr[$i], '</td>';
}
}
echo '</tr>';
}
If data is too big, this may cause an memory error.

Answer 3

I did not understand this part clearly - "Merge rows of a column with the same value."
If you don't want to show duplicate records of a column, you can do it in two ways -
Option 1
Keep the value of specific column in an array. Before displaying that column check if the value exists in the array using is_array(). If exists, then skip, otherwise show and add into the array.
Option 2
While making the query, use DISTINCT(col_name) to get only the unique values.