Brian Swan's Blog: Paging Data with the SQL Server Drivers for PHP: Simplified
Note: This article was originally published at PHPDeveloper
on 27 January 2011.
Brian Swan has simplified the pagination using the SQL Server drivers for PHP in his latest post. He shows how to use a cursor to move around in the result set from your query.
An oversimplified definition of a database cursor might be this: A cursor is database functionality that allows you to point to a certain location within a result set and allows you to move forward (and sometimes backward, depending upon the cursor type) through the result set one row at a time. [...] In the paging [scenario], I'll use a static cursor since that cursor type would seem to satisfy the requirements of many web-based applications.
He shows how to execute a simple query with a dynamic cursor by specifying it in the connection call. He then uses the sqlsrv_num_rows to find the number of records returned and a sqlsrv_fetch_array call to pull just the page you need. He also includes some handy code to paginate the results, complete with links.