CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpjquerymysqlajaxpagination
Drew
Drew

Reputation: 6862

PHP/MySQL Pagination or jQuery?

Just a quick question. If I use a Pagination for my website and am expecting a lot of results, is it better to use jQuery or just a basic PHP/MySQL one that just loads a new page?

If I use jQuery and I have over 300 results from the database, will it have to load it all at once on the initial page load? That might take a long time to load. Or can you make it load only the first 10, and then when you go to Page 2 it will load the next 10?

Just wondering if you have any suggestions for my situation, and if you recommend any good scripts I can use for it.

Thanks!

Upvotes: 3

Views: 2607

Answers (3)

Skone
Skone

Reputation: 745

So, the key here is how you handle paginating results via javascript (jQuery). If you render all 300 results on the page and simply hide results 200-300 (and reveal them via javascript), your page will still be really slow to render initially, and you'll be taxing the database with a query that could be optimized via a limit (pagination).

On the other hand, if you asynchronously query for more results via say, an asynchronous GET request to a web-service that spits the data out via JSON, you can both have a responsive page and avoid a taxing, limitless query.

Using PHP / MySQL and post-backs to handle the issue also prevents the long-initial page load + taxing query.

So, in summary, I'd absolutely paginate your results. I would also suggest you do the following:

1) First architect things using purely PHP / MySQL. So, for instance:

/results/?start=0&limit=20 (Show results 0-19) /results/?start=20&limit=40 (Show results 20-40)

2) Then if you want to provide a responsive, javascript mechanism for loading more, extend your page so that it can spit out JSON with a format parameter:

/results/?start=0&limit=20&format=JSON

So if format=JSON instead of rendering the HTML, it'll just spit out the JSON data, paginated.

3) Then wire up the javascript to use the JSON data to dynamically load in more content:

$.get('/results/?start=' + start + '&format=JSON', function(data) { 
    // Process and display data
});

Hopefully that makes sense!

Upvotes: 8

Elliot Nelson
Elliot Nelson

Reputation: 11557

IMO, start with "basic" PHP/MySQL pagination (load a new page each time the user changes pages).

Once you've got that working, if you want it, then add in jQuery pagination on top. All the jQuery pagination would do is load the new page of results via AJAX, rather than loading an entire new page.

Upvotes: 9

Fabio
Fabio

Reputation: 19176

You've tagged your question with ajax, that's the answer... You should use a combo of PHP/MySQL + Ajax to make the things faster and smoother.

Here is a very popular plugin which implement the client interface: JQGrid

Upvotes: 0

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