Help with checkboxes within tables format Options

[joshmaun]

Hello everyone, I am new to using PHP, and am in need of a little help if anyone would be so kind.

What I am trying to do is pull data for each record from two fields from a table in a database:

player_name (the name of the player)
player_class (what type of character a player plays; e.g. Deathknight, Warrior, Mage)

for each player, a checkbox is created, so that a user could select which players to view more information about (it will display items and date for "loot" a player has received).

The functionality of the code seems in place. What I am working on is the format of the data. I feel the best way to display the data would be to have vertical columns for each unique value of player_class as headings, followed by the players who belong to that class type.

A Mock-up View

Deathknight Warrior Mage
Player 1 Player 3 Player 5
Player 2 Player 4 Player 6

I am having two problems:
1) The submit button for some reason appears before the last table, instead of after it.
2)There is a weird gap between the first and second listing underneath the "Deathknight" table.

Below is a URL to the webpage, along with the code I have so far (please be kind, I am new and I have not cleaned up my code yet as I am still playing with it to get this to work)

Any help or suggestions is appreciated, Thanks.

LINK TO WEBPAGE
http://www.joshmaun.com/testpage

CODE:


$query = "SELECT player_name, player_class FROM player ORDER BY player_class";
$result = mysql_query($query);
$num = mysql_numrows($result);
$i=0;
$f1=mysql_result ($result,$i,player_name);
$f2=mysql_result ($result,$i,player_class);
$old_class=$f2;
?>
<table border="0" style="display:inline">
<th><?php echo $f2; ?></th>
<?php
while ($i < ($num-1)) {
if ($old_class != $f2) {
$old_class = $f2
?>
<table border="0" style="display:inline">
<th><?php echo $f2; ?></th>
<?php
}
?>
<tr><td>
<form action="welcome.php" method="post">
<input type="checkbox" name="players[] " value="<?php echo $f1; ?>" />
<?php echo $f1; ?>
</td></tr>
<?php
$i++;
$f1=mysql_result ($result,$i,player_name);
$f2=mysql_result ($result,$i,player_class);
}
?>
<input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>
</BODY>
</HTML>

[Brian Chandler]

Have you tried the validator on this page? You seem to have a lot of unbracketed <form> elements. You can't do it this way.

Incidentally, using a checkbox _name_ of "players[]" is a common suggestion, but I think it looks awfully naff, needing to include [] in your html page just because of a quirk in the way PHP handles input.

I think a neater way is to use a single character to identify the argument type, e.g. 'p' for player, then put the player's ID (code/name) as the following characters. (So e.g. name=pRuki value=x. Then if you want to have a table that updates various attributes of the players, by using a different letter to identify each attribute, a single table can submit all the stuff you need.)

Again, if you switch on "short brackets (or whatever it's called)" you can replace

<?php echo $f2; ?>

by <?=$f2?>

But you have to find your own style for writing PHP...

Anyway, I think if you use the validator, and straighten out the <table> structure too, you will probably get rid of the funny errors.