MySQL Cookbook

Generating “Click to Sort” Table Headings

Problem

You want to display a query result in a web page as a table that allows the user to select which column to sort the table rows by.

Solution

Make each column heading a hyperlink that redisplays the table, sorted by the corresponding column.

Discussion

When a web script runs, it can determine what action to take by querying its environment to find out what parameters are present and what their values are. In many cases these parameters come from a user, but there’s no reason a script cannot add parameters to URLs itself. This is one way a given invocation of a script can send information to the next invocation. The effect is that the script communicates with itself by means of URLs that it generates to cause specific actions. An application of this technique is for showing the result of a query such that a user can select which column of the result to use for sorting the display. This is done by making the column headers active links that redisplay the table, sorted by the selected column.

The examples here use the mail table, which looks like this:

mysql> SELECT * FROM mail; +---------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | t | srcuser | srchost | dstuser | dsthost | size | +---------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | 2001-05-11 10:15:08 | barb | saturn | tricia | mars | 58274 | | 2001-05-12 12:48:13 | tricia | mars | gene | venus | 194925 | | 2001-05-12 15:02:49 | phil | mars ...