Selecting specific MYSQL rows - php

Question

I have a page that's suppose to create a Div for every 9 entries in the database.
Every Div will consist of 3 ULs and every UL will consist of 3 LIs.
Something like this:
Demo
So, every LI is where each entry is displayed and every Div is essentially a unique page.
This is my code so far:
$sql = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `reviews`") or die(mysql_error());
$e_count = mysql_num_rows($sql);
$r_pages = ceil($e_count / 9);
$x = 1;
$y = 1;
if($e_count > 9){ // if there are more than 9 entries in the database
for($x=1;$x<=$r_pages;$x++){ // creates a div for every 9 items in the database
echo '<div class="rp_pages" id="rp_page_'.$x.'">';
for($y=1;$y<=3;$y++){ // creates 3 ULS in each "page"
echo '<ul>';
// 3 lis should appear here
echo '</ul>';
}
echo '</div>';
}
}
The problem is, i don't want to use multiple queries with a LIMIT in them to select the respective entries.
Can this be done with just a single query?

Answer 1

I only see one query (the first select). After that, instead of using it to count the number of rows, parse each row and extract the review text, this way:
Let's imagine that the reviews table has a text column where the review text is saved. Having your code:
$sql = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `reviews`") or die(mysql_error());
$e_count = mysql_num_rows($sql);
$r_pages = ceil($e_count / 9);
$x = 1;
$y = 1;
if($e_count > 9){ // if there are more than 9 entries in the database
for($x=1;$x<=$r_pages;$x++){ // creates a div for every 9 items in the database
echo '<div class="rp_pages" id="rp_page_'.$x.'">';
for($y=1;$y<=3;$y++){ // creates 3 ULS in each "page"
echo '<ul>';
// Here the code that extract the rows from the query.
for($z=1;$z<=3;$z++){
echo '<li>';
if($data = mysql_fetch_array($sql, MYSQL_ASSOC)) {
echo $data['text']; // Use some type of parser to show special characters like < or > as text, so you are safe from code injection.
}
echo '</li>';
}
echo '</ul>';
}
echo '</div>';
}
}
As you can see, it creates a new loop to create the 3 lis and in each li extracts the text selected in the query, then echoes it.
As http://php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-fetch-array.php says:
Returns an array that corresponds to the fetched row and moves the
internal data pointer ahead.
So the next time you fetch a row, it will be the next one.
PD: PHP's mysql is deprecated. Use mysqli instead. Is the same but with another library that is currently under developement, not like mysql.