Divide list in three columns - php

Question

I have list of values that I want to fetch from my database. List could be long so I want to divide into two columns if it has over 15 items and to three columns if it has over 30. How can I break it in 3 columns. Eg..
01 | 12 | 23
02 | 13 | 24
03 | 14 | 25
04 | 15 | 26
05 | 16 | 27
06 | 17 | 28
07 | 18 | 29
08 | 19 | 30
09 | 20 | 31
10 | 21 |
11 | 22 |
For now i'm using tables and it has huge if-nest at the beginning of every loop
$result = mysql_query("SELECT namecount FROM table WHERE name='$myvar'");
if (!$result)
echo 'MySQL Error: ' . mysql_error();
else
{
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
$namecount= $row['namecount'];
for($i=1;$i<=$namecount;$i++)
{
if($namecount>15)
{
if($i==1)
echo "\n<table><tr><td width=\"200px\">";
if($namecount%2==0)
{
if($i==$namecount/2)
echo "</td>\n<td>";
}
else
{
if($i==($sailiot+3)/2)
echo "</td>\n<td>";
}
}
//Print content here
if($namecount>15)
{
if($namecount%2!=0 && $i==$namecount)
echo "<h3> </h3><p> <br> </p>"; //if last item and count is odd, print empty item
if($i==$namecount)
echo "\n</td></tr></table>\n";
}
}
}
}
This (kinda) works with two columns, but what about three?

Answer 1

I would extract <tr>, </tr> out of the inner loop, this saves additional ifs. For splitting into multiple columns, you can calculate the number of items in a column and introduce a second intra column variable to keep track of:
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
$namecount = $row['namecount'];
// calculate items per column
$columns = 1;
if ($namecount > 15)
$columns = 2;
if ($namecount > 30)
$columns = 3;
$items = $namecount / $columns;
if ($namecount % $columns > 0)
++$items;
echo "\n<table><tr><td width=\"200px\">";
for ($i = 1, $j = 1; $i <= $namecount; $i++, $j++) {
if ($j > $items) {
echo "</td>\n<td>";
$j = 1; // reset for new column
}
// Print content here
}
if ($namecount % 2 != 0) {
// if count is odd, print empty item
echo "<h3> </h3><p> <br> </p>";
}
echo "\n</td></tr></table>\n";
}

Answer 2

you maybe can try this
$result = mysql_query("SELECT namecount FROM table WHERE name='$myvar'");
if (!$result)
echo 'MySQL Error: ' . mysql_error();
else
{
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
$namecount= $row['namecount'];
for($i=1;$i<=$namecount;$i++)
{
if($namecount<=15){
echo "<table><thead><tr><th>".$your_variable_data."</th></tr></thead>";}
else if ($namecount >15 and $namecount <=30){
echo "<thead><tr><th>".$your_variable_data."</th></tr></thead></table>";
}
}
}
its not tested but it should work for 3 columns if you want more just add else if .
here a demo how it will be
http://jsfiddle.net/TCJjj/107/

Answer 3

use css3 multi column property
<style>
.namecount {
-moz-column-count:3; /* Firefox */
-webkit-column-count:3; /* Safari and Chrome */
column-count:3;
}
</style>
<div class="namecount">
Long Text
</div>

Answer 4

I found that CSS3 multi-columns was horribly inconsistent between browsers, and very buggy (elements with float:left, white-space:nowrap, etc. cause it to break).
So I wrote the following brute-force collator that retains key=>value pairs.
// vars
$list = array('a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k','l','m',
'n','o','p','q','r','s','t','u','v','w','x','y','z');
$columns = 3;
// sort it
$count = count($list);
$base = ceil($count/$columns);
$keys = array_keys($list);
for ($i=0;$i<$columns;$i++) {
for ($j=0;$j<$base;$j++) {
if (!empty($keys)) {
$col[$i][] = array_shift( $keys );
}
}
}
$sorted = array();
for ($j=0;$j<$base;$j++) {
for ($i=0;$i<$columns;$i++) {
if (isset($col[$i][$j])) {
$sorted[$col[$i][$j]] = $list[$col[$i][$j]];
}
}
}
// check output
echo '<div style="float:left;margin-right:20px"><h3>ORIGINAL</h3>';
foreach ($list as $k=>$v) echo $k .' = '. $v.'<br>';
echo '</div>';
echo '<div style="float:left"><h3>SORTED</h3>';
foreach ($sorted as $k=>$v) echo $k .' = '. $v .'<br>';
echo '</div>';