Building html tables from query data... faster?

Question

With my limited experience/knowledge I am using the following structure to generate HTML tables on the fly from MySQL queries:

$c = 0;
$t = count($results);

$table = '<table>';

while ($c < $t) {
   $table .= "<tr><td>$results[0]</td><td>$results[1]</td> (etc etc) </tr>";
   ++$c;
}

$table .= '</table>';

this works, obviously. But for tables with 300+ rows there is a noticeable delay in pageload while the script builds the table. Currently the maximum results list is only about 1,100 rows, and the wait isn't long, but there's clearly a wait.

Are there other methods for outputting an HTML table that are faster than my WHILE loop? (PHP only please...)

Answer 1

First, probably the slowness is a result of the HTML rendering and not the PHP script. Second, it is not very usable to build very large tables it is better to use paging.

You can improve your script performance in the PHP side in a few ways:

1. use ob_start(); and ob_get_clean(); - this way the data will be passed to the html at once:

   ob_start();
   // your code here
   echo ob_get_clean();
   

2. use array and join for strings:

   $str = array();
   $str[] = 'add the strings';
   echo implode($str);
   

BR.