Producing HTML Output
Problem
You’d like to turn a query result into HTML.
Solution
mysql can do that for you.
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.[9] 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):
%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<TABLE BORDER=1> <TR><TH>thing</TH><TH>legs</TH><TH>arms</TH></TR> <TR><TD>squid</TD><TD>0</TD><TD>10</TD></TR> <TR><TD>octopus</TD><TD>0</TD><TD>8</TD></TR> <TR><TD>fish</TD><TD>0</TD><TD>0</TD></TR> <TR><TD>phonograph</TD><TD>0</TD><TD>1</TD></TR> </TABLE>
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.)
[9] I’m referring to writing static ...