Paginating MySql Results - php

Question

I have a table that pulls tickets from a MYSQL database and displays them to the user. This part works wonderfully! But, once the user gets 5-10 tickets, the page becomes long and ugly. I am wanting to paginate the responses automatically to show maybe 5 tickets per page and show the rest on following pages.
I am using Bootstrap and have the following for the display of the pagination. "Although I fear this is only pseudo code" I added id's to each main element.
<ul class="pager" id="pagerUL">
<li class="previous" id="previousUL">
← Previous
</li>
<li class="next" id="nextUL">
Next →
</li>
</ul>
Essentially the only code used to pull the database information on the page is:
<?php if(count($tickets) > 0) : ?>
<?php foreach ($tickets as $ticket): ?>
//table content
<?php endforeach ?>
<?php else : ?>
<tr>
<td colspan="7">No Tickets Created.</td>
</tr>
<?php endif; ?>
I thought we could add something to the <?php if(count($tickets) > 0) : ?> But honestly, I am not sure as I am not a expert at php and never even attempted or had the need to build pagination up until now. Any help, guidance, thoughts would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Pass the page number thru the URL and then grab it via php with $_GET.
$page = $_GET['page'];
$per_page = 10; // Define it as you please
$start = $page*$per_page;
$query = "SELECT * FROM table LIMIT ".$start.", ".$per_page;
$result = mysql_query($query);
$count = mysql_num_rows($result);
$i = 0;
for($i=0;$i<$count;$i++)
{
//echo out what you want
echo "";
}
$total_pages = ceil($count/$per_page);
for($i=0;$i<$total_pages;$i++)
{
if($page != $i)
{
echo "<a href='/page.php?page=".$i."'>".$i."</a>";
} else
{
echo $i;
}
}