More simplified way of creating page links dynamically? - php

Question

well I have a working script (see below) but it seems quite clunky and redundant; in my defense I wrote this code many moons ago, but that's not the point. I was curious if anyone has an idea on a more efficient way of writing this code, with less loops and conditionals and, well, noise in the code.
Code in question:
private function pageLinks($num, $page = 1, $search = false, $ne = false) {
$query = ($search) ? '&query='.$search : null;
$by = (is_numeric($ne)) ? '&by='.$ne : null;
$links = 'Page(s):1';
$count = 1;
$npp = $this->numPerPage;
$buttons = 9;
$half = 4;
for($i = 1; $i <= $num; $i++) {
if(($i%$npp) === 0) {
$count++;
}
}
if($count < $buttons) {
for($i = 2; $i <= $count; $i++) {
$links .= '' . $i . '';
}
} elseif($page <= ($half + 2)) {
for($i = 2; $i <= $buttons; $i++) {
$links .= '' . $i . '';
}
$links .= '...' . $count . '';
} elseif($page <= ($count - ($half + 2))) {
$links .= '...';
for($i = $half; $i > 0; $i--) {
$links .= '' . ($page - $i) . '';
}
$links .= '' . ($page - $i) . '';
for($i = 1; $i <= $half; $i++) {
$links .= '' . ($page + $i) . '';
}
$links .= '...' . $count . '';
} else {
$links .= '...';
for($i = $buttons - 1; $i >= 0; $i--) {
$links .= '' . ($count - $i) . '';
}
}
return($links);
}
The method is called like so:
$links = $this->pageLinks($count, $page, $url, $ne);
And the variables are as such:
$count = total number of clients in database (int)
$page = current page to build from (int)
$url = the name or email for the search (String)
$ne = is for the search string either by name (1) or email (2) (int)
And the output is something like (as links):
Page(s):1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9...33
Or if you're in the middle (page 20):
Page(s):1...16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24...33
Now this isn't always called through a search function, hence the default values for $url and $ne, but that's not very important. My question is there a cleaner way to handle building of these links? Or am I stuck with this cluster of loops?

Answer 1

With the help of the people at codereview.stackexchange.com I found exactly what I needed. You can find the answer here for a more in-depth approach, but here is the updated code if anyone comes across this and is curious:
private function pageLinks($num, $page = 1, $search = false, $ne = false) {
$query = ($search && is_numeric($ne)) ? "&query=" . $search . "&by=" . $ne : null;
$links = "Page(s):" . $this->page_link(1, $query);
$npp = $this->numPerPage;
$half = 4;
$count = floor($num / $npp) + 1;
$from = $page - $half;
if($from <= 2) {
$from = 2;
}
$to = $page + $half;
if($to >= $count - 1) {
$to = $count - 1;
}
if($from > 2) {
$links .= "...";
}
for($i = $from; $i <= $to; $i++) {
$links .= $this->page_link($i, $query);
}
if($i < $count) {
$links .= "...";
}
$links .= $this->page_link($count, $query);
return($links);
}
private function page_link($num, $query) {
return("" . $num . "");
}