Question

Hi someone helped me write some of this code last night through another question: Transform html table

I have made some changes to it and I’ma little stuck again.

Basically $results is an array of films. I have formatted it to contain a separate entry for whenever the first letter changes in the array, containing the first letter.

This is the code which does that:

while (false !== ($entry = readdir($handle)) ) {
    if($entry == "." or $entry == "..") 
        continue;

    if($i == 0) {
        array_push($results,substr($entry, 0,1));
    } else if (substr($entry, 0,1) != substr($lastEntry, 0,1)) {
        array_push($results,substr($entry, 0,1));
    }
    $lastEntry = $entry;
    array_push($results,$entry);
    $i++;
}

This results in an array like so:

Array ( 
    [0] => 0 
    [1] => 007, A View to a Kill (1985) 
    [2] => 1 
    [3] => 127 Hours (2010) 
    [4] => A 
    [5] => A Clockwork Orange (1971) 
    [6] => B 
    [7] => Back to the Future (1985) 
    [8] => Butterfly on a Wheel (2007) 
    [9] => C 
    [10] => Carnage (2011) 
    [11] => Casino (1995)  
    [12] => D 
    [13] => Defiance (2008) 
)

So basically I want to produce a table which gives each index (0,1,A,C,etc) a different CSS class and give it a rowspan of 2. This I have done. I produce a table which looks correct. The code below increments $indexRow when it adds a cell with rowspan=2 and then the next row has number_of_cols – $indexRow printed. As the rowspan=2 cell from the above row occupies one of the cells on the current row.

$NUM_COLUMNS = 3;

$numRows = count($results) / $NUM_COLUMNS;
if (count($results) % $NUM_COLUMNS > 0) {
    $numRows += 1;
}

echo "<div align=\"center\"><table>";
$i=0;
$indexRow=0;
for ($i = 0; $i < $numRows; $i++) {
    echo "<tr>\n";

    $index = $i;
    $j=0;

    if($indexRow > 0) {
        $j+=$indexRow;
        $indexRow=0;
    }

    while ($j < $NUM_COLUMNS) {
        $entry = '';
        if ($index < count($results)) {
           $entry = $results[$index];
        }
        if(strlen($entry) < 2) {
            echo "\t<td rowspan=\"2\" class=\"movieindex\">" . $entry . "</td>\n";
            $indexRow++;
        } else {
            echo "\t<td>" . $entry  . "</td>\n";
        }   
        $index += $numRows;

        $j++;
    }
    echo "</tr>\n";
}
echo "</table></div>";

My actual problem is that the movies are not ordered correctly now with the rowspan=2 cells. The movies should be ordered vertically, but get thrown off by the index cells. I’m not sure how I can circumvent this, any ideas?

This is the table I get:

<div align="center">
<table>
<tr>
    <td rowspan="2" class="movieindex">0</td>
    <td>Hancock (2008)</td>
    <td>Sin City (2005)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td>007, A View to a Kill (1985)</td>
    <td>Hangover (2009)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td>007, Diamonds Are Forever (1971)</td>
    <td>Happy Feet Two (2011)</td>
    <td>Snow White (1987)</td>
</tr>

This is what I want:

<div align="center">
<table>
<tr>
    <td rowspan="2" class="movieindex">0</td>
    <td>Hancock (2008)</td>
    <td>Sin City (2005)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td>Hangover (2009)</td>
    <td>Snow White (1987)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td>007, A View to a Kill (1985)</td>
    <td>Happy Feet Two (2011)</td>
    <td>Step Brothers (2008)</td>
</tr>

If any more explanation is needed please just ask and I will edit.
Basically what I’m asking is how do I order the cells vertically, correctly?

Maybe this will help you to understand what I’m trying to do:
http://imageshack.us/f/163/exampletable.png/

Answer 1

As I said in my comment, as a dirty solution, you could add a placeholder in your array after your indexes and don’t display them in your code.

} else if (substr($entry, 0,1) != substr($lastEntry, 0,1)) {
    array_push($results,substr($entry, 0,1));
    array_push($results,"");
}

Which will result in an array like this:

Array ( 
    [0] => 0
    [1] => 
    [2] => 007, A View to a Kill (1985) 
    [3] => 1 
    [4] => 
    [5] => 127 Hours (2010)
);

If you modify your code to this:

if(strlen($entry) == 1) {
    echo "\t<td rowspan=\"2\" class=\"movieindex\">" . $entry . "</td>\n";
    $indexRow++;  // This might be unneeded now, did not test this myself
} else if(strlen($entry) == 0){
     // Do nothing, just a placeholder
} else {
    echo "\t<td>" . $entry  . "</td>\n";
}