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I'm working on a site where you can read about different songs, listen to them, rate them etc, same with their singer.

I've been thinking about how I could create a simple, yet perfectly working pagination script using PHP, and yesterday at night I came up with the code which you will see below.

So first this is the final result of the code below:

Desktop view

enter image description here

Mobile view

enter image description here

The function which returns the number of comments:

function countComments($ID,$table){
    $st=$this->conn->prepare("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM ".$table."_comments WHERE ".$table."ID=?");
    $st->execute([$ID]);
    return $st->fetchall();
}

Deciding which table to choose the comments from, based on which ID is set, song or singer:

if(isset($_GET['songid'])){
    $table="song";
    $ID=$_GET['songid'];
}
else{
    $table="singer";
    $ID=$_GET['singerid'];
}

Storing the number of comments in the total variable, then setting all variable equal with total:

$countComments=$comments->countComments($ID,$table);
$total;
foreach($countComments as $key){
    $total=$key[0];
}
$all=$total;

Then counting the number of pages:

$page=1;
$limit_end=15;
$limit_start=($_GET['page']*$limit_end)-$limit_end;
while($all>$limit_end){
    $page++;
    $all-=$limit_end;
}
$all_pages=$page;
$page_diff=$all_pages-$_GET['page'];

Defining the links, based on which ID is set, song or singer:

if(isset($_GET['songid'])){
    $next_link="/comments/song/".$_GET['songid']."/".($_GET['page']+1);
    $prev_link="/comments/song/".$_GET['songid']."/".($_GET['page']-1);
    $next_next_link="/comments/song/".$_GET['songid']."/".($_GET['page']+2);
    $prev_prev_link="/comments/song/".$_GET['songid']."/".($_GET['page']-2);
    $last_link="/comments/song/".$_GET['songid']."/".$page;
    $first_link="/comments/song/".$_GET['songid']."/1";
}
else{
    $next_link="/comments/singer/".$_GET['singerid']."/".($_GET['page']+1);
    $prev_link="/comments/singer/".$_GET['singerid']."/".($_GET['page']-1);
    $next_next_link="/comments/singer/".$_GET['singerid']."/".($_GET['page']+2);
    $prev_prev_link="/comments/singer/".$_GET['singerid']."/".($_GET['page']-2);
    $last_link="/comments/singer/".$_GET['singerid']."/".$page;
    $first_link="/comments/singer/".$_GET['singerid']."/1";
}

Here's the function that returns with the page buttons, using Heredoc:

function pageButtons($link,$page,$button_class,$mobile){
    return <<<HTML
    <a href="{$link}">
        <button type="button" class="btn btn-sm {$button_class} page-buttons">
            <span class="d-none d-lg-block">
                {$page}
            </span>
            <span class="d-block d-lg-none font-weight-bold">
                {$mobile}
            </span>
        </button>
    </a>
HTML;
}

And finally the code which shows the result:

<div class="text-center m-2 page-buttons-container">
            <span>
                <span class="font-weight-bold">
                    <?php
                        echo $all_pages;
                    ?>
                </span>
                <span>
                    pages
                </span>
            </span>
            <br>
<?php
if($_GET['page']>1){
    if(($_GET['page']+1)-3>1){
        echo $comments->pageButtons($first_link,"First","btn-outline-light","<i class='fas fa-angle-double-left'></i>");
    }
    if(($_GET['page']+1)-1>1){
        echo $comments->pageButtons($prev_link,"Prev","btn-outline-light","<i class='fas fa-angle-left'></i>");
    }
    if(($_GET['page']+1)-2>1){
        echo $comments->pageButtons($prev_prev_link,$_GET['page']-2,"btn-outline-light",$_GET['page']-2);
    }
    if(($_GET['page']+1)-1>1){
        echo $comments->pageButtons($prev_link,$_GET['page']-1,"btn-outline-light",$_GET['page']-1);
    }
}
?>
<select class="form-control m-0 p-0 d-inline bg-transparent text-info border-info all-pages">
    <?php
    for ($i=1; $i < $all_pages+1; $i++) { 
        ?>
        <option class="text-dark" <?php
        if($_GET['page']==$i){
            echo "selected";
        }
        ?> value="<?php
        echo isset($_GET['songid'])?'/comments/song/':'/comments/singer/';
        echo isset($_GET['songid'])?$_GET['songid']:$_GET['singerid'];
        echo'/'.$i;
        ?>">
            <?php
                echo $i;
            ?>
        </option>
        <?php
    }
    ?>
</select>
<?php
if($all_pages>$_GET['page']){
    if($page_diff>=1){
        echo $comments->pageButtons($next_link,$_GET['page']+1,"btn-outline-light",$_GET['page']+1);
    }
    if($page_diff>=2){
        echo $comments->pageButtons($next_next_link,$_GET['page']+2,"btn-outline-light",$_GET['page']+2);
    }
    if($page_diff>=1){
        echo $comments->pageButtons($next_link,"Next","btn-outline-light","<i class='fas fa-angle-right'></i>");
    }
    if($page_diff>=3){
        echo $comments->pageButtons($last_link,"Last","btn-outline-light","<i class='fas fa-angle-double-right'></i>");
    }
}
?>
</div>

There's a short Jquery code for the select to work, which is the following:

 $(".all-pages").on("change",function(){
    $(this).find("option").each(function(){
        if($(this).is(":selected")){
            location.href=$(this).attr("value");
        }
    });
});

And a little bit of CSS

@media (max-width: 776px){
  .page-buttons-container .page-buttons{
    width:20px !important;
    border-radius: 100% !important;
    padding:0 !important;
  }
.all-pages{
  border-radius: 100%;
  width: 25px;
  height:25px;
  border-width: 2px;
  }
}
.all-pages {
  -webkit-appearance: none;
  -moz-appearance: none;
  text-indent: 1px;
  text-overflow: '';
  text-indent: 8px;
  width: 30px;
  height:30px;
  border-width: 2px;
}

I'd like to ask your opinion/review on this code. Is it good enough, or there are still ways to improve it, make it simpler, more understandable/readable, or anything else?

If you have any questions, or you don't understand something in the code, feel free to ask it.

Improve this question
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1 Answer 1

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2
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First of all, it is very good you decided to ask.
Also, it is also very good you are using count(*) to get the count.

For the rest follow the review.

  1. There must be a single table with comments where the comment type is distinguished by means a dedicated field. Which makes your code would be

    function countComments($ID, $type){
    $st = $this->conn->prepare("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM comments WHERE ID=? and type=?");
    $st->execute([$ID, $type]);
    return $st->fetchColumn();
}

  2. The code to get $total variable a good example of a cargo cult code.

    • why define $total if it gets assigned the line below?
    • why loop over a result that contains only one row?
    • I don't really get why do you need $all variable

    • Finally, PDO supports different fetch types, there is no point in using fetchAll() in countComments(). So the code should be just

      $total = $comments->countComments($ID, $type);

  3. I don't really get what does your counting the number of pages do, but all examples I've seen are doing it in a single move, 

    $all_pages = ceil($total/$per_page);

  4. The code in Defining the links is essentially duplicated. Why not to define only different parts and then have a single block of code

    $type = isset($_GET['songid']) ? 'song' : 'singer';
$id   = $_GET[$type.'id'];
$base_link = "/comments/$type/$id/";

$next_link      = $base_link.($_GET['page']+1);
$prev_link      = $base_link.($_GET['page']-1);
$next_next_link = $base_link.($_GET['page']+2);
$prev_prev_link = $base_link.($_GET['page']-2);
$last_link      = $base_link.$page;
$first_link     = $base_link."1";

That's for starter, hope someone will cover the rest

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1
  • \$\begingroup\$ Thank you for ypur answer, the code you provided definitely are better and simpler, especially the 4th one with the links, I really like it. I've realized I overcomplicated things, like counting the pages. About merging the two tables: it's been in plan for a while, and I wanted to solve it the same way you did. I've already did it with other tables(like comment reports), but I really just forgot about this one. \$\endgroup\$
    – K. P.
    Nov 9, 2019 at 18:21

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