dynamically build both <th>'s and <tr>'s - php

Question

The amount of columns in a table is based upon the amount of data in a table. The amount of rows in a table is based on the amount of rows in a different table. An example of these tables are below
environments patches
id | name id | name
____|______ ____|____________
1 | dev 1 | firstPatch
2 | test 2 | secondPatch
3 | prod 3 | thirdPatch
The end result of what I'm looking for would be the following <table>
_________________________________
| Patch Name | dev | test | prod |
|_____________|_____|______|______|
| thirdPatch | | | |
| secondPatch | x | | |
|_firstPatch__|_____|______|______|
I understand how I could use a while() loop to build the table headers. And I understand how I could use a while() to build the rows.
echo "<tr>";
while ($env = $listEnvs->fetch_assoc()){
echo "<th>".$env['name']."</th>"
}
echo "</tr>";
--AND--
while ($patch = $listPatches->fetch_assoc()){
echo "<tr><td>".$patch['name']."</td></tr>";
}
What I am struggling with is that the cells for each patch/environment pair are going to have data that is pulled from several other tables. So knowing the patch.id as well as the environment.id is important. Example the cell with the x is patch.id = 2, environment.id = 1 When constructing the table, how can I make sure each cell has this necessary information?

Answer 1

Try to create an array like $content[$patch.id][$environment.id].
Then you can add echo($content[$patch.id][$environment.id]) to your while of the $patch. You walk through the patches, so $patch.id is known. For $environment.id, you should make an array with all environment.id's and walk through it with $environment.id[i], where $i should be increased with each new column (and set to 0 when a new row is started).
In (bad) pseudo-code:
walkthrough environments {
save array with environments
echo table headers
}
walk through patches {
echo table 'row headers'
walk through environment array {
echo content[patch.id][environment.id]
}
}