Populating with records on Html Table - php

Question

A php custom function returns record set from a mysql query.
I need to populate a two column table having equal quantity or balanced between two.
I know we can split by number of columns the row count then use a loop to populate each td accordingly.
Any suggestions or most practical way to display record sets onto tables organized according to their sizes?
Not using templates at this time.
Basically need to control the TD tag from been echo or not and filled.
Sample Code:
$col_num = 2; //Number of colums to parse data onto.
$count_r = mysql_num_rows($result)/$col_num;
echo '<table style="width:400px;border:3px solid green;"><tr><td>';
$ui=1;
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
if($ui<$count_r)
{
echo '<input disabled type="checkbox" value="$row[id]"'; $this->ischecked($uid,$row[id]); echo "/>".$row['name'].'<br>'."\r\n";
}
$ui++;
}
//FIRST COLUMN SET
echo '</td>';
echo '<td>';
//SECOND COLUMN SET
echo '</td></tr></table>';

Answer 1

If you don't mind about the order of your records you could simply do (assuming you've got your results in an array called $result) the following:
...
echo "<table>";
for($i=0;$i<count($result);$i+=2):
echo "<tr>";
echo "<td>{$result[$i]['field']}</td>";
echo "<td>{$result[$i+1]['field']}</td>";
echo "</tr>";
endfor;
echo "</table>";
I don't know if it's the best way of doing this but it's the way I'd do it in your case. Keep in mind that I'm not checking if there are any actual results, we are assuming that it's the case. To check if $results is set you could use an if statement checking it's count number for example.
Note
Replace for($i=0;$i<count($result);$i+=2): with for($i=0;$i<count($result);$i+=2){ and endfor; with } for a traditionally formatted code.

Answer 2

I'd recommend using an unordered list -- <ul>, and apply the CSS float attribute to its list items (<li>). That way, you won't have to worry about counting the number of records.
Just output each record in a <li>, and set them all to float: left;.
Then constrain the height of the <ul> so it will be short enough to force the extra <li>s to float to a new column.
As #Steve pointed out, you'll also need to set the <li> width to be constant so the columns will be consistent. And make the width of your <ul> more than twice and less than three times as big as the <li> width.
A basic way to do that would be to call mysql_num_rows() on your query. Multiply the result by the height of each <li>, then divide by two, and that will be the height of your <ul>. That will make each column of equal height.
You could also do it with <div>s (one <div> for each item, all wrapped in a single global <div>).
But using a list is the preferred way of displaying a list of information in HTML (unless the information is tabular in nature and requires multiple columns per field, which yours isn't and doesn't).
If you need more detailed help, there's a great Opera Web Standards article on this.