Simple Pagination In PHP MySQL (Step-By-Step Example)

Welcome to a tutorial on how to create simple pagination with PHP and MySQL. Yes, there are a lot of frameworks out there that deal with pagination, but some left people scratching their heads with an insanely long “how to use bible”. So here it is, let us walk through a simple “DIY pagination” example that does not require any third-party frameworks – Read on!

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

EXAMPLE CODE DOWNLOAD

Source code on GitHub Gist

Just click on “download zip” or do a git clone. I have released it under the MIT license, so feel free to build on top of it or use it in your own project.

 

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TUTORIAL VIDEO

 

STEP 0) DUMMY USERS TABLE

CREATE TABLE `users` (
  `id` bigint(20) NOT NULL,
  `name` varchar(255) NOT NULL
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4;

ALTER TABLE `users`
  ADD PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  ADD KEY `name` (`name`);

ALTER TABLE `users`
  MODIFY `id` bigint(20) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT;
 
INSERT INTO `users` (`id`, `name`) VALUES
(1, 'John Doe'),
(2, 'Jane Doe'),
(3, 'Rusty Terry'),
(4, 'Peers Sera'),
(5, 'Jaslyn Keely'),
... ;

Before we go into the scripts, let us begin by creating a dummy user table to work with. This is but a simple one with 2 fields – The ID and name.

 

 

STEP 1) CONNECT TO THE DATABASE

<?php
// (A) SETTINGS - CHANGE TO YOUR OWN!
define("DB_HOST", "localhost");
define("DB_NAME", "test");
define("DB_CHARSET", "utf8mb4");
define("DB_USER", "root");
define("DB_PASSWORD", "");
define("PER_PAGE", "10"); // entries per page
 
// (B) CONNECT TO DATABASE
$pdo = new PDO(
  "mysql:host=". DB_HOST .";dbname=". DB_NAME .";charset=". DB_CHARSET,
  DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, [
  PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE => PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION,
  PDO::ATTR_DEFAULT_FETCH_MODE => PDO::FETCH_ASSOC
]);

Yep, step 1 of the script should be very “Captain Obvious”. Just a couple of settings and connecting to the database itself.

 

STEP 2) GET THE TOTAL NUMBER OF PAGES

// (C) TOTAL NUMBER OF PAGES
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT CEILING(COUNT(*) / ".PER_PAGE.") `pages` FROM `users`");
$stmt->execute();
$pageTotal = $stmt->fetchColumn();

Moving on, we need to calculate the total number of pages.

• In the previous step, we have set the pagination to show 10 entries per page – define("PER_PAGE", "10")
• So, the total number of pages can then be easily obtained with a single SQL query – SELECT CEILING(COUNT(*) / PER_PAGE) `pages` FROM `users`.

 

 

STEP 3) GET ENTRIES FOR THE CURRENT PAGE

<?php
// (D) GET ENTRIES FOR CURRENT PAGE
// (D1) LIMIT (X, Y) FOR SQL QUERY
$pageNow = isset($_GET["page"]) ? $_GET["page"] : 1 ;
$limX = ($pageNow - 1) * PER_PAGE;
$limY = PER_PAGE;

// (D2) SQL FETCH
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM `users` ORDER BY `id` LIMIT $limX, $limY");
$stmt->execute();
$users = $stmt->fetchAll();

With that, we can now move forward to get the entries for the current page.

• For this demo, we will use $_GET["page"] (http://site.com/1-paginate.php?page=N) to switch between the pages. If $_GET["page"] is not set, we will assume that it is page 1.
• To get the entries for the current page, we need to run a "SELECT * FROM `users` LIMIT X, Y query.
  • If you are new – X is the starting row, and Y is the number of rows to extract.
  • On page 1, we fetch entries 1 to 10. That is X = 0 and Y = 10.
  • On page 2, we fetch entries 11 to 20. That is X = 10 and Y = 10.
  • On page 3, we fetch entries 21 to 30. That is X = 20 and Y = 10, and so on.
• Putting that into the mathematical form:
  • $limX = ($pageNow - 1) * PER_PAGE;
  • $limY = PER_PAGE;

 

 

STEP 4) OUTPUT HTML

<!-- (E1) USER LIST -->
<ul class="demo"><?php
foreach ($users as $u) {
  printf("<li>%u %s</li>", $u["id"], $u["name"]);
}
?></ul>

<!-- (E2) PAGINATION -->
<div class="pagination"><?php
for ($i=1; $i<=$pageTotal; $i++) {
  printf("<a %shref='1-paginate.php?page=%u'>%u</a>", 
    $i==$pageNow ? "class='current' " : "", $i, $i
  );
}
?></div>

With all the calculations done, all that’s left is to generate the HTML.

• Output the user entries –  foreach ($users as $u) { ... }
• Draw the pagination squares – for ($i=1; $i<=$pageTotal; $i++) { ... }

Of course, feel free to use your own favorite library to create a nice list and pagination – Bootstrap, Material Design, etc…

 

 

 

ADDING SEARCH & FILTER

To add a “search box with pagination”, we simply need to add an HTML form.

<form method="get" action="1-paginate.php">
  <input type="hidden" name="page" value="1">
  <input type="text" name="search" id="search">
  <input type="submit" value="Go!">
</form>

Then change the SQL accordingly to also include the search term/restrictions:

// TOTAL NUMBER OF PAGES
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT CEILING(COUNT(*) / ".PER_PAGE.") `pages` FROM `users` WHERE `name` LIKE ?");
$stmt->execute(["%".$_GET["search"]."%"]);

// GET USERS
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM `users` WHERE `name` LIKE ? LIMIT $limX, $limY");
$stmt->execute(["%".$_GET["search"]."%"]);

 

LINKS & REFERENCES

• PHP Data Objects (PDO)
• Simple AJAX Example With PHP – Code Boxx