Producing HTML Output

1.24.1 Problem

You'd like to turn a query result into HTML.

1.24.2 Solution

mysql can do that for you.

1.24.3 Discussion

mysql generates result set output as HTML tables if you use -H (or --html) option. This gives you a quick way to produce sample output for inclusion into a web page that shows what the result of a query looks like.[8] Here's an example that shows the difference between tabular format and HTML table output (a few line breaks have been added to the HTML output to make it easier to read):

[8] I'm referring to writing static HTML pages here. If you're writing a script that produces web pages on the fly, there are better ways to generate HTML output from a query. For more information on writing web scripts, see Chapter 16.

% mysql -e "SELECT * FROM limbs WHERE legs=0" cookbook +------------+------+------+ | thing | legs | arms | +------------+------+------+ | squid | 0 | 10 | | octopus | 0 | 8 | | fish | 0 | 0 | | phonograph | 0 | 1 | +------------+------+------+ % mysql -H -e "SELECT * FROM limbs WHERE legs=0" cookbook

The first line of the table contains column headings. If you don't want a header row, see Recipe 1.26.

The -H and --html options produce output only for queries that generate a result set. No output is written for queries such as INSERT or UPDATE statements.

-H and --html may be used as of MySQL 3.22.26. (They actually were introduced in an earlier version, but the output was not quite correct.)