Hello everyone, and thanks for reading my first newbie post. :-)

I am a neopyhte PHP and postgreSQL user, with a website at www.the-athenaeum.org.  We 
store (among other things) artworks, which people can view in a list, sorted by artist 
name, date, medium, etc.

We now have enough works that I need to rewrite the PHP listings script (and its 
embedded SQL) so that users can page through records.  As an example, if a user is 
looking at works by date ascending, they may want to see 100 records at a time.  Since 
we have 600+ records, there would be 7 pages.  They'd start on the first page (of 
course!) and there would be links to pages 2 through 7 as well, just like with results 
pages of a Google search.  They could, from page 1, click any of the other pages to go 
immdiately to that set of 100 records for display.

I see this kind of thing all over the place, and in looking it up, I see most 
solutions use "SELECT TOP x", which postgreSQL doesn't seem to have.  I know how to 
use LIMIT, but that always starts from the top.  I could add a piece to the WHERE 
clause, say something like "WHERE date > 01-02-1853", but how do I know where the 
cutoffs are several pages along, without retrieving the whole record set?

I suppose the optimal solution for me would be to sort all of the records, then be 
able to select a range from that sorted record set.  So, if they click the link to 
page 3, I'd like to do this (in pseudocode):

1.  SORT records by the date field, descending
2.  Retrieve only records 200-299 from the sorted list

Is there a way to do that?  How is it done elsewhere?

Thanks in advance for your help,
Chris McCormick, webmaster
The Athenaeum - Interactive Humanities Online
www.the-athenaeum.org




---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster

Reply via email to