1.24 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.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):

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.

% 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
 
thing
legs
arms
 
squid
0
10
 
octopus
0
8
 
fish
0
0
 
phonograph
0
1
 

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

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.)