PHP display data on columns

Supposing that you're building yourself a web directory or a website that is based on multiple category listings you will reach this chapter when you will need to display categories based on more columns and not the usual method which either displays data on a single column (the simple methods) or it does but the nested repeated region will loop horizontally like in the example below which, like I said is not a good solution and we will see why is that.

1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20

The bad thing using this solution is the effect that will have to your readers. When we (we as the readers in this case) see a column we read it from the top to bottom. The nested solution will arrange your data from left to right for each line. I will share some code with you that will arrange the categories from top to bottom and I really want you to try and compare both of them to see what I'm talking about. Here's an example of the output:

1	5	9	13	17
2	6	10	14	18
3	7	11	15	19
4	8	12	16	20

It's easy to look at numbers in both ways but when we actually read between categories it's hard to follow the course by reading from left to right when we have columns. It's harder to explain the situation rather than looking at some examples. The code uses an array with your data and outputs the columns. It's flexible so you can use 1,2,3 or more columns. It will do the math alone.

$items = array('ALABAMA','ALASKA');//create an array with your data

// Default # of Columns
$numcols = 4;

// Number of Items
$numitems = count($items);

// Number of Rows
$numrows = ceil($numitems/$numcols);

    echo '<table>';
    for ($row=1; $row <= $numrows; $row++)
    {
        $cell = 0;
        echo ' <tr>'."\n";
        for ($col=1; $col <= $numcols; $col++)
        {
        echo '  <td>'."\n";

        if ($col===1)
        {
            $cell += $row;
            print $items[$cell - 1];
        }
        else {
            $cell += $numrows;
            print $items[$cell - 1];
        }
        echo '  </td>'."\n";
        }
        echo ' </tr>'."\n";
    }
    echo '</table>';

I had this pasted on a forum and a member tried to use his database to interact with the array so for those of you who don't know how to work around it here's the modified version:

    $query_cat = "SELECT * FROM "table" WHERE";
    $query_cat .= " "filtered_row" = "parameter"";

    $cat = mysql_query($query_cat) or die(mysql_error());
    $total = mysql_num_rows($cat);

    while($row = mysql_fetch_array($cat))
    {
	// -- This array will hold your data, 
	// -- I used it to hold a title, an id and an author 
	// -- but it can be extended based on your own needs
        $items[] = array(1 => $row['title'], 2 => $row['id'], 3 => $row['author']);
    }
        // Default # of Columns
        $numcols = 4;

        // Number of Items
        $numitems = count($items);

        // Number of Rows
        $numrows = ceil($numitems/$numcols);

        echo '<table width="100%">';
        for ($row=1; $row <= $numrows; $row++)
        {
            $cell = 0;
            echo ' <tr>'."\n";
            for ($col=1; $col <= $numcols; $col++)
            {
            echo '  <td width="'.round(100/$numcols).'%">'."\n";

            if ($col===1)
            {
                $cell += $row;
                print $items[$cell - 1][1]; /*  $items[$cell - 1][1] to display title  $items[$cell - 1][2] etc... */
            }
            else {
                $cell += $numrows;
                print $items[$cell - 1][1];
            }
            echo '  </td>'."\n";
            }
            echo ' </tr>'."\n";
        }
        echo '</table>';

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