Re: Alternate colors for every record

The documentation you read shows you how to make a table manually with HTML tags, then use a conditional perl statement with a counter to decide which background color to use. After that's decided, you use baseportals "out" command mixed with HTML table tags to constuct the table one element at a time.

For your page, tinker with some code like this:
# this section creates the table and writes the heading row:


<table cellpadding=2 border=1 cellspacing=0> <tr><td>State</b></td><td>Lake/Riv/Res</td><td>Month</td> ... </tr>


# next you'll write each data record, one field at a time. the "loop" construct will perform all of the instructions between <loop> and </loop> for every record in the db. thus:



<loop code=perl> if($_loop % 2==0) { out '<tr bgcolor="#a0a0a0">'; } else { out '<tr bgcolor="#e0e0e0">'; } out "<td>$State</td><td>$Lake/Riv/Res</td><td>$Month</td> ... </tr>"; </loop> </table>


The "if" statement figures out what row you're on, so which background row color to use. The <td>$Month</td> stuff is just the HTML table data tags around the database field name (case sensitive). The $ before the field name makes it a variable, and baseportal will place the value of that field in that record in that spot. If your fieldname has special characters (like / or $), refer back to the documentation to see how to handle them. Perhaps the $_loop(fieldname) method would be helpful. If all else fails, rename the fields, leaving out the offending characters.

I'm a novice here too, but the above will help, with some tweaking. A warning: it won't be quick, but if you're inclined to learn a lot, or if you'll want to customize the display of your data, it's a helpful exercise to undertake. There's lots of places on the net to find out more about constructing HTML tables, and color charts to pick the HEX codes (the #e0e0e0 stuff) for your background colors.

I hope this helps, and good luck.