Question

I’ve created a PHP program for adding and viewing reminders. The add page works, but I’m having some trouble displaying them properly. How should I code this to only get the actual data? Also, how could I put this into an HTML table? (i.e. column for name, description, and date; rows are the retrieved data)

Thanks

When I open the file in my browser I get this as an output:

Array ( [reminderID] => 14 [reminderName] => Test [reminderDescript] => Test_Descript [reminderDate] => 2012 05 7 )

Code:

<?php include 'header.php'; ?>
<?php include 'database.php'; ?>
<div id="content">
  <h1>Reminder List</h1>
        <table align ="center">
    <thead>
        <tr>
            <td>Name</td>
            <td>Description</td>
            <td>Date</td>
        </tr>
    </thead>
    <?php 
        $query = 'SELECT * FROM reminder_event';
        $result = mysql_query($query);
            while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
                print_r($row);
            }
        ?>
  </table>
  <p><a href='reminder_add.php'>Add Reminder</a></p>
</div>
<?php include 'footer.php'; ?>

Answer 1

print_r() is a diagnostic tool for debugging, not to be used for real output. Instead, output HTML to a table using the array keys fetched from your row.

// Open a table
echo "<table>";
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
  // Output each row
  echo "<tr>
   <td>{$row['reminderName']}</td>
   <td>{$row['reminderDescript']}</td>
   <td>{$row['reminderDate']}</td>
  </tr>";
}
// Close the table
echo "</table>";

Better still, escape each of the values for HTML output with [htmlspecialchars()] (https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.htmlspecialchars.php) before output to prevent cross-site scripting attacks and broken HTML if characters like < > & are encountered in the values.

echo "<table>";
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
  // Encode all values for HTML output
  $name = htmlspecialchars($row['reminderName']);
  $desc = htmlspecialchars($row['reminderDescript']);
  $date = htmlspecialchars($row['reminderDate']);

  // Then output the encoded values
  echo "<tr><td>$name</td><td>$desc</td><td>$date</td></tr>";
}
echo "</table>";