MySQL Query in PHP - How to display vertical results in a horizontal table?

Question

So I have inherited a table that holds data collected from a webform, but stacks all the responses into one column like below - there are a lot more rows than this but this is an example,

U_ID    Q_ID  textResponse
1       1     jon
1       2     toomey    
1       3     some@email.com
1       4     NULL
1       5     NULL
2       1     bob
2       2     smith
2       3     another@email.com
2       4     NULL
2       5     NULL
3       1     jim
3       2     kirk
3       3     captains@log.com
3       4     NULL
3       5     NULL

I need to seperate all the responses for each person into rows and ignore the NULL entries.

I want it to look like this,

Name     Surname    Email
jon      toomey     some@email.com
bob      smith      another@email.com
jim      kirk       captains@log.com

The SQL I've been trying looks like this,

$sql = "
SELECT
    CASE 
        WHEN q_id = 1 THEN textResponse 
    END AS Name
FROM Responses 
UNION
    SELECT
        CASE 
            WHEN q_id = 2 THEN textResponse 
        END AS Surname
    FROM Responses 
UNION
    SELECT
        CASE
            WHEN q_id = 3 THEN textResponse 
        END AS Email
    FROM Responses
";

The PHP I've written looks like this,

<?php while ($rows = $result->fetch_assoc()){ ?>
    <tr>
        <?php
            foreach ($rows as $row)
            echo "<td>" . $row . "</td>"; 
            ?>
    </tr>
 <?php
     } 
 ?>

but it's just giving me everything in one line, rather than three columns

MySQL 5.7.18 PHP 5.3.3

Any ideas?

Cheers Jon

Answer 1

It would be much easier to do this in your php code:

First get everything by

SELECT `Q_ID`, `textResponse` FROM `Responses` ORDER BY `U_ID`, `Q_ID`

Then in your while do something like this

$table_rows = '';
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
  switch($row['Q_ID']) {
    case '1': 
      $table_rows .= '<tr><td>' . $row['textResponse'] . '</td>';
      break;
    case '2':
    case '3':
      $table_rows .= '<td>' . $row['textResponse'] . '</td>';
      break;
    case '4':
      $table_rows .= '</tr>';
      break;
  }
}

Lastly, wrap it in proper table markup and send it back:

die('<table><tbody>' . $table_rows . '</tbody></table>');