Can I show, hide and toggle results in PHP echo? - php

Question

Basically by clicking the "comment" link the last result of the query should show and by clicking again it should be hidden. I have tried Rocket's code as well but I get an error message in the bottom of the browser and when I click "comments" it just takes me to the top of the page. I would apprieciate some advice on this
$i = 1; // ID Counter
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
echo "<h1>$row[title]</h1>";
echo "<p class ='second'>$row[blog_content]</p> ";
echo "<p class='meta'>Posted by .... • $row[date] • Comments<div id='something$i' style='display: none;'>$row[comment]</div>";
$i++; // Increment counter
}

Answer 1

This is a loop, echoing the same thing over and over, thus making all the divs have the same ID, something2.
IDs need to be unique, you gonna have to make unique IDs for each div.
Something like: <div id='something$i' style='display: none;'> (remembering to increment $i).
Also, you're gonna to escape the quotes in your onclick attribute.
<a href='#' onclick=\"toggle_visibility('something$i');\">
The code should look something like this:
$i = 1; // ID Counter
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
echo "<h1>$row[title]</h1>";
echo "<p class ='second'>$row[blog_content]</p> ";
echo "<p class='meta'>Posted by .... • $row[date] • Comments<div id='something$i' style='display: none;'>$row[comment]</div>";
$i++; // Increment counter
}

Answer 2

Escape the quotes :
$blah = "onclick='toggle_visibility(\"something2\");'>Comments</a>"
There is an easier way to hiding / showing the next sibling ....
try this
<div style="display:none">some hidden content</div>​
function toggle(el,ev) {
ev.preventDefault(); // prevent the link from being followed
el = next(el); // get the next element
if (el.style.display == "none") { // toggle the display
el.style.display = "block";
} else {
el.style.display = "none";
}
}
/*
Credit to John Resig for this function
taken from Pro JavaScript techniques
*/
function next(elem) {
do {
elem = elem.nextSibling;
} while (elem && elem.nodeType != 1);
return elem;
}
​
Working example

Answer 3

You can throw in a counter into your code as the while loop is executing to dynamically generate unique id's for each comment div. Or, you can pull a unique field out of the query result for the id's, as long as you hook up to it appropriately later if it ends up being used and remain consistent in the rest of the code.
either
$count = count($result);
...
while (...){
$count--;
echo '... id="something'. $count .'" ...'
}
or...
while (...){
echo '... id="something'. $row['ID'] .'" ...'
}