When listing information from a database using php and mysql how would you make the first row look different to the rest?

Question

Basically I have articles in my database and I want to alter the way the first record displays. I want the lastest (Posted) article to be the focus and the older article just to list, (see F1.com). I need to know how to get the first of my values in the array and get it to display differently but I am not sure how to do this, I can do it so all rows display the same just not how to alter the first row. I also need to know how to tell the rest of the rows to display the same afterwards im guessing you use an if statement there and before that some kind of count for the rows.

---

Current code:

    $result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM dbArticle WHERE userID='".$_SESSION["**"]."' ORDER BY timestamp DESC");

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
  {
  echo "<h2 class=\"heading1\">". $row['title'] ."</h2>";
  echo "By:  ".$row['username']."  Type: ".$row['type']."  Posted: ".$row['timestamp']." 
  $body = $row['body'];
  echo "<br/><p>";
  echo substr("$body",0,260);
  echo "...<span class=\"tool\"><a class=\"blue\" href=\"index.php?pageContent=readArticle&id=".$row['id']."\">Read More</a></span></p><hr/>";
  }
mysql_close($con);

---

Ok I have taken Luke Dennis's code and tried to test it, but I am getting this error: Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() this is the line of the foreach statment. Something that has just come to mind is that I will only want 5 or so of the older articles to display. This is what I have thats creating the error:

<? $con = mysql_connect("localhost","****","***");
if (!$con)
  {
  die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
  }

mysql_select_db("******", $con);

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM dbArticle ORDER BY timestamp DESC");
$first = true;    
foreach($result as $row){
    if($first)
    {
        echo"".$row['title']."";
        echo"this is the headline";

        $first = false;
    }
    else
    {
        echo"".$row['title']."";

    }
}

?>

Do I need to add mysql_fetch_array somewhere to set the array up?

Answer 1

I would just iterate through the results and apply a css class to the first entry:

$first = true;    
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
  $cssClass = '';
  if ($first) {
    $cssClass = 'highlight';
  }
  echo '<p class="' . $cssClass . '">' . $row['text'] . '</p>';
  $first = false;
}

Answer 2

A simple if statement when looping through your results will usually do the trick. You can use a boolean to indicate if you've output the first row of results or now. If you haven't then give it a particular style and then set the boolean to true. Then all subsequent rows get a different style.

Answer 3

I presume you have some code that loops through your resultset and prints them into the page? Could you paste this code in, and that might give us a starting point to help you.

Answer 4

It's a bit crude, but I often hard-code a variable to designate the first run through a loop. So something like:

$first = true;
foreach($list_of_items as $item)
{
    if($first)
    {
        // Do some stuff

        $first = false;
    }
    else
    {
        // Do some other stuff
    }
}

Answer 5

All of the above are correct. Luke Dennis' post is of course fleshed-out a bit more.

As Brian Fisher said, add some CSS styling to the first link when you encounter it per Luke's post.

I took a look at the article list on the F1 website. Pretty well constructed site - "One would expect that." :-)

Anyway, the article listings are contained within a two row table (summary="Latest Headlines") in descending order (newest first).

Just place a class in the second column (<td class="first-news-article">). Then add the class name and appropriate styling values in the css file - probably your' modules.css. There's already quite a few class values associated with articles in that file, so you may be able to just use an existing value.

That should be about it - other than actually doing it!

By the way, judging by the quality of the underlying html, I'm assuming there's already an "article list emitter." Just find that emitter and place the appropriate conditional to test for the first record.

Darrell

I just noted your code addition. I assume that you were showing the F1 site as an example. Anyway, I think you're on your way.

Answer 6

The best way to do this is to put a fetch statement prior to the while loop.

Putting a test inside the while loop that is only true for one iteration can be a waste of time for a result of millions of rows.

Answer 7

I'd use array_shift():

$result = mysql_fetch_assoc($resultFromSql); // <- edit
$first = array_shift($result);
echo '<h1>'.$first['title'].'</h1>';

foreach ($result as $row) {
  echo '<h2>'.$row['title'].'</h2>';
}

Answer 8

I don't know PHP, so I'll pseudocode it in Perl. I wouldn't do it like this:

my $row_num = 0;
for my $row ($query->next) {
    $row_num++;

    if( $row_num == 1 ) {
        ...format the first row...
    }
    else {
        ...format everything else...
    }
}

The if statement inside the loop unnecessarily clutters the loop logic. It's not a performance issue, it's a code readability and maintainability issue. That sort of thing just BEGS for a bug. Take advantage of the fact that it's the first thing in the array. It's two different things, do them in two different pieces of code.

my $first = $query->next;
...format $first...

for my $row ($query->next) {
    ...format the row...
}

Of course, you must make the first row stand out by using tags.