Question

I’m trying to figure out the best way to do something like this. Basically what I want to do (in a simple example) would be query the database and return the 3 rows, however if there aren’t 3 rows, say there are 0, 1, or 2, then I want to put other data in place of the missing rows.

Say my query returns 2 rows. Then there should be 1 list element returned with other data.

Something like this:
http://i42.tinypic.com/30xhi1f.png

$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM posts LIMIT 3");
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($query))
{
  print "<li>".$row['post']."</li>";
}
//(this is just to give an idea of what i would likkeee to be able to do
else
{
  print "<li>Add something here</li>";
}

Answer 1

There are three ways I can think of, get the row count with mysql_num_rows, prime an array with three values and replace them as you loop the result set, or count down from three as your work, and finish the count with a second loop, like this:

$result = db_query($query);
$addRows = 3;
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result){
    $addRows--;
    // do your stuff
}
while ($addRows-- > 0) {
    // do your replacement stuff
}