Display PHP Query results in table regardless of # of columns returned?

Question

So I'm exploring the wonderful world of PHP and I'm still creating very dirty, poorly build code but I'm trying to get better! So my question is as follows:

Is there a way to automatically calculate the columns in the result set and spit out a pretty HTML table regardless of query used?

Here the current code:

<?php
include '../includes/connect.php';
include '../includes/queries.php';
$stid = oci_parse($conn, $export);
oci_execute($stid);
echo "<table class='pure-table pure-table-striped' style='font-size:11px;'><thead><tr><th>Name</th><th>File Name</th><th>Export Date</th></tr></thead>";
while (oci_fetch($stid)) {
    echo "<tr><td>" . oci_result($stid, 'DISPLAY_NAME') . "</td>";
    echo "<td>" . oci_result($stid, 'LAST_EXPORT_FILE') . "</td>";
    echo "<td>" . oci_result($stid, 'LAST_EXPORT_DATE') . "</td></tr>";
}
echo "</table>\n";
oci_free_statement($stid);
oci_close($conn);

I'd like to use the same table every time, but just have it auto detect column header names and number of columns and return it in a table.

Is it possible or does it make sense?

Answer 1

I do exactly that using PDO.

$out = '';
$q = $conn->prepare($SQL);
if ($q->execute()) {
    $rows = $q->fetchAll();
    if (!empty($rows)) {
        //We have something
        $out .= "<table class='pure-table pure-table-striped' style='font-size:11px;'>";
        $first = true;
        //iterate on rows
        foreach($rows as $row) {
            //Clean out all the numeric keys - stops duplicate values
            foreach ($row as $key => $value) {
                if (is_int($key)) {
                    unset($row[$key]);
                }
            }

            //header
            if ($first) {
                //write header
                $out .= '<thead><tr>';
                foreach ($row as $key => $value) {
                    $out .= '<th>' . $key . '</th>';
                }
                $out .= '</tr></thead>';
                $first = false;
            }
            //write line
            $out .= '<tr>';
            foreach($row as $key => $value) {
                $out .= '<td>' . $value . '</td>';
            }
            $out .= '</tr>';
        }
        $out .= '</table>';
    }
}
echo ($out);