[cnelson87]

my brain just can't seem to wrap itself around this so please forgive a php newbie. I would like to dynamically generate the rows and cells of an html table at 5 cells to a row. for example, if I have 27 product images to display, I need 6 rows of 5 (the last row having 3 empty cells). I can write the script to round up to 30, and then loop thru 6 times to generate 6 rows. I have that part of my script working with any random number I throw at it. but the part I don't have is to have the 1st row loop thru the first 5 items, the 2nd row loop thru the next 5, etc etc...
hoping my request makes sense, thanks in advance.
Chris

[larkost]

*knuckles crack*

Code:
<table>
<?php
	$itemsPerRow = 5;
	$theItems = array(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11);
	for($i = 0; $i < count($theItems);) {
?>
	<tr>
<?php
		for($j = 0; $j < $itemsPerRow and $i < count($theItems); $j++, $i++) {
?>
		<td width="20"><?php print $theItems[$i] ?></td>
<?php
		}
?>
	</tr>
<?php
	}
?>
</table>

In some cases you might want to handle running out of items in the middle of a row differently, but this will give you a start.

[redJag]

whoa, do you always close your PHP tags when you want to print HTML? Seems like a PITA, but I guess it *sort of* seperates front-end from back-end (both integrated in the same file, still..). You know you can use echo "</tr>" etc, right?

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by redJag:
whoa, do you always close your PHP tags when you want to print HTML? Seems like a PITA, but I guess it *sort of* seperates front-end from back-end (both integrated in the same file, still..). You know you can use echo "</tr>" etc, right?

I always close mine. Otherwise you end up escaping double quotes and other sorts of hackery.

[madmacgames]

there is no need to have nested loops here.

Here are 2 example of how to do this without using nested loops. The 1st is for if the items are in an array, the second is for if the items are not in an array but the total count is known.

[php]
Example 1: using items in an array:
<table border="1" width="50%">
<tr>
<?php
$cells_per_row = '6';

$product_images = array(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15);

$i=0;
foreach ($product_images as $product_image) {
$i++;

echo "<td>$product_image</td>";

if (!($i % $cells_per_row) && ($i != sizeof($product_images))) {
echo "</tr><tr>";
}
}
?>
</tr>
</table>
<br /><br />
Example 2: items not in an array, but count known:
<table border="1" width="50%">
<tr>
<?php
$cells_per_row = '6';
$number_of_items = '15';

for ($i=1; $i<=$number_of_items; $i++) {

echo "<td>$i</td>";

if (!($i % $cells_per_row) && ($i != $number_of_items)) {
echo "</tr><tr>";
}
}
?>
</tr>
</table>
[/php]

[larkost]

redJag: Unless there is good reason to do so, I usually close my tags. It tends to produce cleaner code (as Arkham_c said), and the majority of the time you have more code between the segments. Plus you get the benefit that if you are using a color-coding editor things wind up the right colors.

The reason that many people do not do this is because they come from a ASP background. In ASP moving between code and non-code blocks is fairly expensive, and slows down the render. This is not really the case with PHP.

[Lucidwray]

This is how i usually handle loops to build tables. It creates a variable that holds a string with the entire completed table in it. Keeps it nice and portable so you can move it around anywhere on the page.

The first part is just some basic code to return results from a MySQL database.

Code:
<?
// Start the opening tag of the table
$table = "<table width=100%  border=0 cellspacing=2 cellpadding=2><tr>";
$cell_count = "0" ; 
// This is just coded to return results from a MySQL database
$results = @mysql_query($sql_count,$connection) or die("Error #" . mysql_errno() . ":" . mysql_error()  . ")");
while ($row = @mysql_fetch_array($results)) {
			$item_name=$row['item_name'];
			
			$table .= "<td>$item_name</td>" ;
			$cell_count++ ;
			if ($cell_count == 4)
				{
				$table .= "</tr><tr>" ;
				$cell_count = 0 ;
				}
			
			}
			// close out the table after the while loop exits
			if ($cell_count < 4)
				{
				$table .= "</tr></table>" ;
				} else {
				$table .= "</table>" ;
				}
?>

The formatting is kinda screwed up from the copy paste into here and I havent run this specific code to make sure it runs.. but you get the idea..

[cnelson87]

Just wanted to say thanks! I got larkost's code working first try.
Chris