Show first letter of a list once?

[jarv]

hi,

 

I have a list of towns and need to get the first letter from each town and just display it once before the start of that lettered group ie;

 

what I have:

 

Aberdeen

Arundel

Aberyswith

Bath

Bristol

Brighton

Cardiff

coventry

 

what I would like:

 

A

Aberdeen

Arundel

Aberyswith

B

Bath

Bristol

Brighton

C

Cardiff

coventry

 

here is the code which writes out my list:

 

<ul class="edgetoedge">
               <?php while($row1 = mysql_fetch_array($locals))
				{
				echo '<li class="forward"><a href="townpubs.php?RSTOWN='.$row1['RSTOWN'].'" rel="external">'.$row1['RSTOWN'].'<small class="listcounter">'.$row1['PubCount'].'</small></a></li>'; 
				}
				?>
            </ul>

[Roman Fedorov]

What you can make is execute the sql query ordered by alfabetical order.

Then start writing towns keeping in memory the first letter, when you see that the first letter changes - write it

[sunfighter]

Two ways to get the first letter of a string:

$string = 'happy';

echo substr($string, 0, 1);

echo $string[0];

Both echo h.

 

algorithm for display:

 

$old_title = $title = '';

 

loop here till done

// do query

$title =$string[0];

if ($title == $old_title){

echo $string;

$old_title = $title;

}else{

echo $title; // <- make it bold

$old_title = $title;

} end loop

 

I see $row1['PubCount']   Is this for information only or for a pub crawl? Or maybe a yankee invention the poker run?

[acefirefighter]

It took me a little while to type this and you have a couple of answers already but I will post it anyway. I haven't tested it but it should get you going in the right direction.

<?php 

$alphabet = null;
while($row1 = mysql_fetch_array($locals)) {

if($alphabet != substs($row1['RSTOWN'],0,1)) {
	echo strtoupper(substr($row1['RSTOWN'],0,1)); // add your html formatting too.
	$alphabet = substr($row1['RSTOWN'],0,1);
}
echo '<li class="forward">
		<a href="townpubs.php?RSTOWN='.$row1['RSTOWN'].'" rel="external">'
		.$row1['RSTOWN'].
		'<small class="listcounter">'.$row1['PubCount'].'</small>
		</a>
	  </li>'; 
}