PHP / MySQL select data and split on pages

This tutorial is going to show you how to SELECT data from a MySQL database, split it on multiple pages and display it using page numbers. Check our live demo.

We have MySQL table called "students" holding 100 records with the following fields:
ID: autoincrement ID
Name: varchar(250)
PhoneNumber: varchar(250)

Instead of doing a single SELECT query and display all the 100 records on a single page we can have 5 pages each containing maximum 20 records. To do this we will need to use the LIMIT clause for SELECT command so we can limit the query to show only 20 records. The LIMIT clause also allows you to specify which record to start from. For example this query

$sql = "SELECT * FROM students ORDER BY name ASC LIMIT 0, 20";

returns 20 records sorted by name starting from the first record. This next query

$sql = "SELECT * FROM students ORDER BY name ASC LIMIT 50, 20";

shows 20 records sorted again by name but this time it will start from the 50th record.
So basically in this clause (LIMIT start, count) "start" specify the starting record and "count" specifies how many records to show.

We will first define MySQL connection variables and connnect to the database

<?php

error_reporting(0);

$servername = "localhost";

$username = "****";

$password = "****";

$dbname = "****";

$datatable = "students"; // MySQL table name

$results_per_page = 20; // number of results per page



// Create connection

$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

// Check connection

if ($conn->connect_error) {

    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);

} 

?>

Next thing to do is to make a PHP file called index.php which will show the first 20 records from our table. The code below selects and then prints the data in a table.

<?php

if (isset($_GET["page"])) { $page  = $_GET["page"]; } else { $page=1; }; 

$start_from = ($page-1) * $results_per_page;

$sql = "SELECT * FROM ".$datatable." ORDER BY ID ASC LIMIT $start_from, ".$results_per_page;

$rs_result = $conn->query($sql); 

?> 

<table border="1" cellpadding="4">

<tr>

	<td bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><strong>ID</strong></td>

	<td bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><strong>Name</strong></td><td bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><strong>Phone</strong></td></tr>

<?php 

 while($row = $rs_result->fetch_assoc()) {

?> 

            <tr>

           	<td><? echo $row["ID"]; ?></td>

            <td><? echo $row["Name"]; ?></td>

            <td><? echo $row["PhoneNumber"]; ?></td>

            </tr>

<?php 

}; 

?> 

</table>

Now, when you open index.php in your web browser you will see table showing the first 20 records from your "students" table.

The first 2 lines of the above code

if (isset($_GET["page"])) { $page  = $_GET["page"]; } else { $page=1; }; 

$start_from = ($page-1) * $results_per_page;

are used to create a $start_from variable depending on the page that we want to view. Later you will see that we will pass a "page" value using the URL (e.g. index.php?page=2) to go to different pages. Next, we need to find out the total amount of records in our table and the number of pages that we will need. To do this we run another query using COUNT() function.

$sql = "SELECT COUNT(ID) AS total FROM ".$datatable; 

$result = $conn->query($sql);

$row = $result->fetch_assoc();

$total_pages = ceil($row["total"] / $results_per_page);

The $total_records is now equal to the number of records that we have in our database, in our case 100. We have 20 records per page so the total number of pages that will be needed is 5 (4 pages with 20 records and last page will have 10 records).

Calculating the amount of pages needed using PHP can be done using ceil() function.

$total_pages = ceil($total_records / $results_per_page);

We divide the total number of records by records per page and then the ceil() function will round up the result. Now we have 2 new variables - $total_records equal to 100 and $total_pages equal to 5.
To print page numbers and associate URLs to each number we will use for() cycle.

<?php 

for ($i=1; $i<=$total_pages; $i++) { 

	echo "<a href='index.php?page=".$i."'>".$i."</a> "; 

}; 

?>

Above code will print numbers from 1 to 5 and for each number will create different link.
index.php?page=1
index.php?page=2
index.php?page=3
index.php?page=4
index.php?page=5
as you can see each link passes different page value which is used in the SELECT query above.

At the end you should have a file like this (remember to add the MySQL connection string):

<?php

if (isset($_GET["page"])) { $page  = $_GET["page"]; } else { $page=1; };

$start_from = ($page-1) * $results_per_page;

$sql = "SELECT * FROM ".$datatable." ORDER BY ID ASC LIMIT $start_from, ".$results_per_page;

$rs_result = $conn->query($sql);

?> 

<table border="1" cellpadding="4">

<tr>

	<td bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><strong>ID</strong></td>

	<td bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><strong>Name</strong></td><td bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><strong>Phone</strong></td></tr>

<?php 

 while($row = $rs_result->fetch_assoc()) {

?> 

            <tr>

           	<td><? echo $row["ID"]; ?></td>

            <td><? echo $row["Name"]; ?></td>

            <td><? echo $row["PhoneNumber"]; ?></td>

            </tr>

<?php 

}; 

?> 

</table>



<br />



<?php 

$sql = "SELECT COUNT(ID) AS total FROM ".$datatable;

$result = $conn->query($sql);

$row = $result->fetch_assoc();

$total_pages = ceil($row["total"] / $results_per_page); // calculate total pages with results

 

for ($i=1; $i<=$total_pages; $i++) {  // print links for all pages

            echo "<a href='index.php?page=".$i."'";

			if ($i==$page)  echo " class='curPage'";

			echo ">".$i."</a> "; 

}; 

?>

This index.php file will print a table with maximum 20 records per page and at the bottom 5 page numbers each pointing to a page showing different 20 records.

If you have any questions you can always use the form below to ask for free help.
Do not forget to check the demo here.