The Basic Code - PHP

This article will show you the fastest way to order your database results, via JavaScript (with some work in PHP). It adds some more work to your script, but once you see the results you won't use the approach of adding the ORDER By clause anymore.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

By: Alvaro Calleja

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December 06, 2004

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<?
//Connect to the database
$conn=mysql_connect('localhost','root','') or die
('Sorry, no connection to database available :-(');
//Perform our query
$query='SELECT * FROM test.products';
if (!$res=mysql_query($query, $conn))
{
die ('Sorry, query error');
}
//We populate the $output variable with the HTML code
//to generate the results table
$output='<table><tr style="font-
weight:bold"><td>ID</td><td>NAME</td><td>PRICE</td><td>
CODE</td>
<td>WEIGHT</td></tr>';
while ($a=mysql_fetch_row($res))
{
//Append the table row to our $output variable
$output.="<tr id='line$a[0]'><td>$a[0]</td><td>$a[1]
</td><td>$a[2]</td><td>$a[3]</td><td>$a[4]</td></tr>";
}
$output.='</table>';
?>
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<div id='content'>
<?=$output?>
</div>
</body>
</html>

Okay, this piece of code should produce this output, a table with all the products on it:

Ordering Columns in DDBB Search Results

Make sure you check the while loop. We assign each TR element an id, being this id the ID number of the product (the ID number of each product is unique, so we are sure there won't be two TR with the same ID):

<tr id='line1'><td>1</td><td>Absolute
Delight</td><td>2.20</td><td>59</td><td>50</td></tr>

<tr id='line2'><td>2</td><td>Aqua
Mirabilis</td><td>2.35</td><td>114</td><td>15</td></tr>

This table is then echoed into a DIV element, which I've assigned the id "content".

I can hear you saying "Yes I know where you want to go!" Not really? Ok, flip the page and let's get our hands dirty with the sorting!

Next: We Love InnerHTML! >>