Question

I am new to PHP and trying to learn it by creating a database of all my jobs (I’m a freelance designer). I have created the code below to generate a table to display all jobs where the description contains logo which works fine and generates several rows….

<?php
$logojobs = mysql_query("SELECT *  FROM hlgd_projects WHERE description LIKE '%logo%'", $connection);
?>

<a href="index.php?report=logo">View logo jobs</a>

<?php
if ($report == 'logo') {         
echo "<h1>Logo jobs</h1>";
echo "<table id='report'>
    <tr>
     <th></th>
     <th>Status</th>
     <th>Lead</th>
     <th>Start</th>
     <th colspan='2'>Codes</th>
     <th>Client</th>
     <th>Description</th>
     <th>Fee</th>
     <th>Contact</th>
     <th colspan='2'>Invoice</th>
     <th>Paid</th>
    </tr>";
 while ($logojob = mysql_fetch_array($logojobs)) { 
    echo "<tr>
        <td class='id'>" . $logojob['id'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $logojob['status_id'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $logojob['lead_id'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $logojob['date_start'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $logojob['code_lead'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $logojob['code_hlgd'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $logojob['client'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $logojob['description'] . "</td>
        <td>&pound;" . $logojob['fee'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $logojob['contact'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $logojob['invoice'] . "</td>
    <td>" . $logojob['date_inv'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $logojob['date_paid'] . "</td>      
    </tr>";             
 }  
 echo "</table>";        
}
?>

However I would like to be able to generate reports for lots of different things and so would like to create a function to generate the table and pass the relevant arguments each time. I’ve done this as follows but it only generates the first row so I presume it’s ignoring the while? Can anyone tell me where I’m going wrong or how to better put the code above into a function?

<?php
function report_bytype($title,$job_set,$job_name) {
  $reporthead = "<h1>$title</h1>
    <table id='report'>
    <tr>
     <th></th>
     <th>Status</th>
     <th>Lead</th>
     <th>Start</th>
     <th colspan='2'>Codes</th>
     <th>Client</th>
     <th>Description</th>
     <th>Fee</th>
     <th>Contact</th>
     <th colspan='2'>Invoice</th>
     <th>Paid</th>
    </tr>";
  while ($job_name = mysql_fetch_array($job_set)) { 
    $reportrows = "
        <tr>
        <td class='id'>" . $job_name['id'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $job_name['status_id'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $job_name['lead_id'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $job_name['date_start'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $job_name['code_lead'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $job_name['code_hlgd'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $job_name['client'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $job_name['description'] . "</td>
        <td>&pound;" . $job_name['fee'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $job_name['contact'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $job_name['invoice'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $job_name['date_inv'] . "</td>
        <td>" . $job_name['date_paid'] . "</td>     
    </tr>";             
  }                             
  $reportfoot = "</table>"; 
  $reporttable = $reporthead . $reportrows . $reportfoot;
  echo $reporttable;
  return $reporttable; 
}
?>

<?php
if($report == 'logo') {
report_bytype("logo",$logojobs,$logojob);
}
if($report == 'stationery') {
report_bytype("stationery",$stationeryjobs,$stationeryjob);
}
?>

Many thanks in advance,
Helen

Answer 1

The problem is this line:

while ($job_name = mysql_fetch_array($job_set)) { 
    $reportrows = "lots of html"
}

Every time this loops $reportrows is set to the html for that row only.

Use $reportrows .= "some html"; instead which will add each row to $reportrows rather than replace $reportrows with that row.

Edit: Replacing += with .=.