I've been racking my brain about an easy way to generate an HTML table with rowspans with PHP that would look like this, numbers indicating each cell's rowspan:
I noticed that there is sort of a pattern in the rowspans if you go from left to right, top to bottom: 1,3,7,1,1,1,1,1,3,1,1. I'm not sure if that matters.
Also, I wonder if it's possible to use any method for the table above for a table like this:
maybe addressing your second example first is easier, but it might be adapted to the first example.
the structure of the tables in html is obtained using the rowspan an colspan properties.
try to picture the table as a closet, the rows as drawers and cells as boxes inside those drawers.
with these properties, u can "merge" the cells throughout rows and/or columns.
my approach would be to set a minimal block with the appearance and data that you need, ie your second example, and write it down in html.
the "php-cycle-the-thing-up" part would require you to use that html "template" in the loop dropping your recordset data in the td portions of the html.
in that way, i think you might get what your looking for.
on the other side, if you need the php to create the table dynamically, and merge the cells automatically in a set pattern, or even ignoring the pattern and simply adapt the structure as the data is coming, it would probably be better to look at the structure from the end.
because of the way that tables are built with html, nesting table-tr-td, building cycles with this look is tricky. have you considered simply nesting divs?
i'm new to stackoverflow, i wanted to comment but by the time i finished this, i couldn't remove the answer nor comment the question, sorry if this didnt quite help you... :S
write down, come up with the recursion formula for the table. you need to come up with the math with the least number ideally ZERO conditional statements.
it's not that hard. for a desktop, i use three columns if it detects a mobile devices, my php automatically switches to 1 or 2 columns depending upon screen size
Related
thanks for help with previous PHPWord issue. I have another.
I'm creating documents with tables where each table is basically used as a stylized container for a list of items. For example, in my case i have a collection of legal definitions. Each definition has a code, title, and textual description that appears in a table. So when there's multiple definitions, each definition has its own table, and appears like so:
and so on. Each table isnt really a table, its more i'm kind of hijacking tables to stylize my document. The problem is when I have a long list of items, invariably some of the tables will be split between pages where the top row of the table will be at the very bottom of the page and bottom row of the table will be at the very top of the next page, like so
This is very undesired. Is there any way to tell PHP word that "hey, if this table is going to be split between pages, just put the whole table on the next page" ??
I'm also using PDFmake for making pdf's and it has a pageBreakBefore function that can be used for exactly this purpose. I notice that paragraphs have a pageBreakBefore style which can force each pragraph to appear on a new page, but this isnt what i'm looking for. Is there some way i can maybe get into how PHPWord builds the document to put a conditional test in maybe?
Any input is greatly appreciated thanks.
I had the same problem .... and found the answer today in "normal" MsWord documentation. I found the equivalent in the phpWord doucmentation, tried it and it works:
In your paragraph formats, set 'keepNext' => true
Does anyone know a clever way to create even columns of text using php?
So lets say I have a few paragraphs of text and I want to split this into two columns of even length (not string length, I'm talking even visible length).
At the moment I'm splitting based on word count, which (as you can imagine) isn't working too well. For instance, on one page I have a list (ul li style) which is increasing the line breaks but not the word count. eg: whats happening is that the left column (with the list in it) is visibly longer than the right column (and if there was a list in the right hand column then it would be the same the other way round).
So does anyone have a clever way to split text? For instance using my knowledge of objective c there is a "size that fits" function. I know how wide the columns are going to be, so is there any way to take that, and the string, and work out how high its going to be? Then cut it in half? Or similar?
Thanks
ps: no css3 nonsense please, we're targeting browsers as far back as ie6 (shudder). :)
I know you're looking at a PHP solution but since the number of lines will depend on how it's rendered in the browser, you'll need to use some javascript.
You basically need to know the dimensions of the container the text is in and using the height divided by the text's line-height, you'll get the number of lines.
Here's a fiddle using jQuery: http://jsfiddle.net/bh8ZR/
There is not a lot of information here as to the source data. However, if you know that you have 20 lines of data, and want to split it, why not simply use an array of the display lines, then divide by two. Then you can take the first half of the PHP array and push it into the second column when you hit the limit of the first.
I think you're going to have trouble displaying these columns in a web browser and having a consistent look and feel because you're trying to apply simple programming logic to a visual layout. CSS and jQuery were designed to help layout issues. jQuery does have IE6 compatibility.
I really don't think you're going to find a magic bullet here if you have HTML formatting inside the data you're trying to display. The browser is going to render this based on a lot of variables. Page width, font size, etc. This is exactly why CSS and other layout styles are there, to handle this sort of formatting.
Is there any reason why you're not trying to solve this in the browser instead of PHP? IE6 to me is not a strong enough case not to do this where it belongs.
Is it more efficient to use a taglist field, with all the tags separated by a space, or use 2 more tables (tag: tagid tagtext, tagitem: tagid, itemid)?
The efficiency largely depends on what you are doing. If you want to query based on the tag name, it is probably faster if you have a tag table with the ID keyed on both the tag and items table (i.e. option #2). However, unless you have thousands of rows of either, it probably won't make a difference. If you don't have that many tags at all, the difference will be even less.
If you want to get tags by item IDs, though, the first method is ever so slightly faster. Again, I doubt you will notice.
There are other considerations to make: data integrity and normalization. If you use two tables and foreign keys, it is much easier for you to have your set of tags be consistent with the items. If a tag is removed and you are only using one table, old items will still have the old tags. Additionally, it's much easier to get a list of unique tags and keep it consistent. If you have tags in another table, this opens up a whole new world of organization: you can make timestamps for tag creation and modification, mark tags as active or inactive (and possibly other statuses), etc.
The second option. Store the tags separately. You won't be able to write good queries to search on a specific tag if you store them in a single field. You don't want to use MATCH or LIKE to filter on tags. By storing them in a separate table, you can easily find the tags you need, and the related articles too. Your tables do need to be properly indexed, though.
Never store comma/space/otherwise separated values in a database if you need to query for those values. The whole essence of a database is to store the data in a structured way. This way the database can optimize the retrieval of that data to a great extent.
The second version, to split the data into two additional tables, is a lot more efficient, as it allows the database to use indexes to run the queries you mostly need (Get all texts with a certain tag, get a count of how often the tags are used sorted by count for the tag cloud, and get all tags for the given text)
One table will be more efficient, but having two tables is generally the proper way to store simple tags.
I am building an ebook app, and for that I have a big chunk of text (the book) and I have to divide it into N number of divs with a special class. I manage to achieve somehow a result by counting the words and after N words create another div, but words count is not a really good parameter.
Is there any way I can fill a div (320 x 480) with text and when its full create another one? In the end what I need is the full list of divs one after another.
Any hint on what should I look for is much appreciated!
Thanks
No, because you can't work out programatically how big that text is going to be when it is ultimately rendered for display.
Why not let the device itself work out how much text it can display on a page?
I don't have time to work out the specifics, but something (admittedly hacky) you could do is add a certain amount of text to the div and then check how its scrollHeight compares to its offsetHeight. This is probably going to be really slow, and you'd have to have some way of comparing it before you actually add the text: scrollHeight is always equal to offsetHeight, until the text actually overflows, and that's exactly what you're trying to avoid. Maybe some kind of temporary div? I don't know. I'll leave the specifics to you to work out. ...Or ignore completely. Whatever.
I've got a client that requires that an article be displayed in two, sometimes three, columns in Joomla. I am fairly sure they won't be happy with having to edit 3 articles for 3 columns so the splitting would have to be done automatically.
I've done something similar before where it'll split a chunk of HTML into n columns, but have no real idea how to accomplish this within Joomla itself.
Any ideas gratefully recieved!
An alternative approach:
Use Javascript to split up the Article in several column in the browser. Here I could imagine a full-automated approach could work.
Advantages (over the first approach):
As Javascript can know, which height the paragraphs actually have in the browser (unlinke PHP), you could find the optimum split more accurately.
This can be implemented in the template php-File: you tell the template to include the js-File. So it could be made context-dependent,E.g.: If the left column is collapsed (because there are no modules in it), tell the JavaScript-File to initialize to 3 columns, else 2 columns.
However, have in mind that it should rest usable for those who have Javascript disabled.
This doesn't seem to be easy.
At first thought this should be an CSS attribute, but if it exists, it is part of CSS 3.0 and as such only understood by modern browsers (if at all). But I didn't find any way to do this in CSS.
So you actually have to modify your HTML code. I would propose the following:
A Button (editor-xtd plugin) that splits the article into several parts, each one for one column, showing a dotted line in the editor box (similar to the "read-more"-Button).
E.g. it inserts in the article: (you will have to define hr.column in /templates/system/css/editor.css).
A (content) plugin that creates the multiple colum-style,
E.g. replacing the hr-Tag with table or floating divs.
This way, it is half-automized, without mangeling in the Joomla! files but only adding to extensions to it.
the CSS 3 rules for multi-columns are:
-column-width
-column-gap
-column-rule
-column-count
with the vendor label (-moz, -webkit) before.
More info at http://www.css3.info/preview/multi-column-layout/
I would use css and tell the people with Explorer to change browser! (i'm jocking of course)
Otherwise javascript is the way like said before. This script should do (not tested) http://13thparallel.com/archive/column-script/
This should be done through the template, some PHP coding is involved.
One of our clients asked us to do the exact same thing before, and we have done it through template. Note that for very small articles we increased the font in order to split the article into 3 columns.