Zend Generic View Helper for displaying any DB->fetchAll() result set

Question

Is it possible to write a Zend View Helper that could present the resultset of any fetchAll() operation as a generic table?.

My model code looks like this

class Model_DbTable_XWZ extends Zend_Db_Table_Abstract
{
    protected $_name = 'xwz';
    protected $_primary = 'id';

    public function getA()
    {
        $sql = $this->select()
        ....
        return $this->fetchAll($sql);
    }

    public function getB()
    {
        $sql = $this->select()
        ...... 
        return $this->fetchAll($sql);

but rather using Zend_Debug::Dump() to view the results, it would be handy to use a generic view helper.

class Zend_View_Helper_DisplayGenericTableHelper extends Zend_View_Helper_Abstract {

    public $view;

    public function setView(Zend_View_Interface $view)
    {
        $this->view = $view;
    }

    public function displayGenericTableHelper($result)
    {
        ....??        
    }
}

Something like but i'm not sure how to determine the column names from the $result object.

Answer 1

You could use the function Zend_Db_Table_Row_Abstract::toArray(), like this:

// in view helper
public function displayGenericTableHelper(Zend_Db_Table_Rowset_Abstract $rowset) {
    $table = '<table><tr>';
    foreach(array_keys($rowset->current()->toArray()) as $column) {
        $table .= '<th>'.$column.'</th>';
    }
    foreach($rowset as $row) {
        $table .= '</tr><tr>';
        foreach($row->toArray() as $content) {
            $table .= '<td>'.$content.'</td>';
        }
    }
    return $table.'</tr></table>';
}

Use case:

// in a view
<?= $this->displayGenericTableHelper($this->model_data) ?>

alternative call:

// in controller
$model_data = $your_model->getA();
$view->your_table = $view->displayGenericTableHelper($model_data);

// in view:
<?= $this->your_table ?>

Point of improvement: use a partial to keep HTML out of your helper.