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My connection to my database was successful. I now have all of the data from a table stored as an array in a php variable named $data. I am trying to extract three rows from this variable and display them with html.

Here is what my code looks like (with the exception of the connection info being removed):

    <?php 
    $data = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM specs")
    or die(mysql_error());
    while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($data)) {
    $rows[] = $row;
    ?>

I know that I can pull individual data from this variable and insert it into html successfully by entering code like this (for example):

    <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
      <tr>
        <td>Model: <?php echo $row['name'];?></td>
      </tr>
    </table>

But my problem is that I want to display three separate rows of data from the database as three individual columns in a html table. (Hope that makes sense)

I've looked into how to do this with foreach and while but am not quite sure where I'm going wrong.

I'm hoping someone might be able to shed some light on this as I have read about foreach loops, while, and am still stuck! I'm also hearing that mysql_query is deprecated but ruled out not using this since our webserver is still using an old version of php and mysql and is not planning to update anytime soon.

Sorry if I'm not all here in my post - it's late and I'm tired. Thanks for your help in advance! I'll keep an eye on this in case anyone has questions.

share|improve this question
    
So you want the first row of the table to be elements 0, 1, 2 of the array, the second row of the table to be elements 3, 4, 5 of the array, and so on? – Barmar Oct 24 '13 at 3:16
    
Hi Barmar, I want each row to be one column. So row 1 from the database would be column 1 in formatted html, row 2 would be column 2 in formatted html, and row 3, column 3 in formatted html, but they would be specific rows from the database determined by the product model. I hope this makes sense. Please let me know if you need more information. Thank you! – christopherjc Oct 24 '13 at 16:07
    
That's trivial. Just write a loop that outputs each row inside <td>...</td>. – Barmar Oct 24 '13 at 16:57
up vote 0 down vote

This will print the array in a table with each row being 3 elements of the array.

echo "<table>";
for ($i = 0; $i < count($rows); $i += 3) {
    echo "<tr>";
    for ($j = 0; $j < 3; $j++) {
        if (isset($rows[$i+$j]) {
            echo "<td>Model: {$rows[$i+$j]['name']}</td>";
        }
    }
    echo "</tr>";
}
echo "</table>";
share|improve this answer
    
Hi Barmar, I left a response to your question above. Would something like this produce the 3 rows from the db to 3 cols in html? Thank you for your help! – christopherjc Oct 24 '13 at 16:11
    
This will do what I said in my first comment above. If there are only 3 rows retrieved from the database, it will produce one table row with 3 columns. If 6 rows are retrieved, it will produce two table rows with 3 columns. – Barmar Oct 24 '13 at 16:59
up vote 0 down vote

It's simpler to limit the SQL to three rows, and then echo all incoming rows directly, without first adding to an array. That would waste resources.

<?php 
    echo "<table>";

    $data = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM specs LIMIT 3")
      or die(mysql_error());

    while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($data)) 
        echo '<tr></td>', $row['name'], '</td></tr>';

    echo "</table>";
?>

Ah, but now I see it's a year old question. I hope you learned a lot in the meantime.

share|improve this answer

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