Question

I have a variable amount of 1 word text items being outputted from a mysql database query.

In order to make them presentable and spread in an aesthetic manner in the div, i figured i could put them into a table, this way no matter how many outputs i have, they will be sorted and organized.

I figured i can use php to pop the output into an array, and based on the number of elements in the array i can modify the formatting accordingly using control statements.

However upon doing some research i’ve heard it’s bad to use tables for formatting because i should keep content and layout separate.

Does that really apply in this case? If so, how could i make a desirable layout in a div when i dont know whether there will be 5, 10, or 20 elements?

Answer 1

Here is an example of how to put your query into a table.

$mysqli = new mysqli(DB_HOST, DB_USERNAME, DB_PASSWORD, DB_NAME);
        if ($mysqli->connect_errno)
        {
            echo "Failed to connect to MySQL: (" . $mysqli->connect_errno . ") " . $mysqli->connect_error;
            $mysqli->close();
        }

    $values = $mysqli->query("YOUR SELECT GOES HERE");
    $cols = 3;
    $i =1;
    echo "<table>".PHP_EOL;
    echo "<tr>".PHP_EOL;
while($row = $values->fetch_assoc())
    { 

    if (is_int($i / $cols))
        {
            echo "<td >".PHP_EOL;
            //what ever you want to include goes here
            echo "</td>".PHP_EOL;
            echo "</tr>".PHP_EOL;
            echo "<tr>".PHP_EOL;
        }
        else
            {
                echo "<td >".PHP_EOL;
                //what ever you want to include goes here
                echo "</td>".PHP_EOL;
            }
            $i++;
    }
        echo "</tr>".PHP_EOL; 
        echo "</table>".PHP_EOL;

you can set the amount of rows with the $cols variable