HTML and PHP 5 States Per Row - php

Question

I'm wanting to have a list of states and the cities under it. I want 5 states per row with the cities that have records under it, then I want it to start a new row. I started trying to figure it out and I've been going for hours and my brain hurts. Can anyone help?
Here's what I have right now:
$lookup = "SELECT state, city, count(city) as num FROM needs WHERE country IS NULL AND
status='posted' GROUP BY state, city ORDER BY state, city";
if ($result = mysql_query($lookup)) {
$num_rows = mysql_num_rows($result);
echo "<table>";
$i = 1;
$cols = 3;
$prev = '';
while ($frows = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
$fcity = $frows['city'];
$fstate = $frows['state'];
$fcitycount = $frows['num']; // num is holding your count by city
if ($fstate != $prev) {
echo "<tr><td><h2>$fstate</h2></td>";
$prev = $fstate;
}
echo "<tr><td><a href='browseresults.php?city=$fcity&state=$fstate'>$fcity, $fstate ($fcitycount)</a></td></tr>";
}
echo "</table>";
}
EDIT:
It should look like this:
Arkansas Tennessee Missouri
Searcy, AR (1) Bartlett, TN (1) St. Louis, MO (4)
Little Rock, AR (4) Memphis, TN (3) Perry, MO (3)
Benton, AR (2) Branson, MO (1)
Shell, MO (2)
Except it will be done 5 times instead of 3
EDIT 2:
Here's the code I tried but it's still not working :-/
$lookup = "SELECT state, city, count(city) as num FROM needs WHERE country IS NULL AND status='posted' GROUP BY state, city ORDER BY state, city";
if ($result = mysql_query($lookup)) {
$num_rows = mysql_num_rows($result);
echo "<table><td>";
$i = 1;
$j = 1;
$cols = 5;
$prev = '';
while ($frows = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
$fcity = $frows['city'];
$fstate = $frows['state'];
$fcitycount = $frows['num']; // num is holding your count by city
if ($fstate != $prev) {
echo "<tr><h2>$fstate</h2></tr>";
$prev = $fstate;
}
echo "<tr><a href='browseresults.php?city=$fcity&state=$fstate'>$fcity, $fstate ($fcitycount)</a><br></tr>";
if ($fstate != $prev) {
echo "</td><td>";
}
}
echo "</td></table>";
}

Answer 1

Here is one way to do it, based off your current code attempt. The state and all of its cities are within the same cell.
echo "<table>";
$i = 1;
$cols = 3; // of cells per row
$prev = '';
echo "<tr>"; // start the first row
while ($frows = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
$fcity = $frows['city'];
$fstate = $frows['state'];
$fcitycount = $frows['num']; // num is holding your count by city
if ($fstate != $prev) {
if($i>$cols){ // check if we have reached our # of $cols
echo "</td></tr><tr>"; // end cell/row and start new row
$i=1; //reset counter
}
elseif ($prev != '') { // if not the first cell/state
echo "</td>"; // end cell before starting new cell/state
}
echo "<td><h2>$fstate</h2>";
$prev = $fstate;
$i++;
}
echo "<a href='browseresults.php?city=$fcity&state=$fstate'>$fcity, $fstate ($fcitycount)</a><br />";
}
echo "</td></tr>"; //end the last cell/row
echo "</table>";
By changing $cols value (ie $cols=5, you can change the number of cells per row.
See an example of this in a phpfiddle - http://phpfiddle.org/main/code/pkg-90i
this creates a table like this-