How to separate database results into 2 columns?

Question

I saw the examples of how to do the odd even way, but I want the order to flow from one whole column to the next and not alternating left to right for each alphabetical item. Can this be done?

Here is the query

$db = JFactory::getDbo();
$db->setQuery('SELECT title, introtext 
               FROM #__content
               WHERE introtext LIKE "%Still Airing%"
               ORDER BY title ASC');
$row = $db->loadAssocList();

I tried dividing it by 2, but then how do you get each column to appear in html?

$half = count($row) / 2;

What I was thinking was I could use the variable to list that number of items in each column (or table tds) , but don't know the syntax or if I'm doing it right. Like list $half items and then the rest in the next column.

The introtext is just a filter, I only want the titles displayed.

Answer 1

Using array_chunk() with the row count cut in half then rounded-up will ensure that the second column always has equal or one less row than the first column.

HTML tables should only be used to display "tabular" data. Since you are building two non-tabular lists, it would be more appropriate to employ other tags (several different tags may be appropriate).

Demo (copy-paste my snippet into phptester.net to see the rich-text result)

// $resultset = $db->loadAssocList();  ...I am supplying my own sample data
$resultset = [
    ['title' => 'A', 'introtext' => 'A intro'],
    ['title' => 'B', 'introtext' => 'B intro'],
    ['title' => 'C', 'introtext' => 'C intro'],
    ['title' => 'D', 'introtext' => 'D intro'],
    ['title' => 'E', 'introtext' => 'E intro']
];

$halves = array_chunk($resultset, ceil(count($resultset) / 2));

foreach ($halves as $half) {
    echo '<div style="display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; border: solid 1px black; padding: 2px;">';
        foreach ($half as $row) {
            echo '<div style="border: 1px solid blue; padding: 2px;">';
                echo '<p style="background-color: green;">' , $row['title'] , '</p>';
                echo '<p style="background-color: yellow;">' , $row['introtext'] , '</p>';
            echo '</div>';
        }
    echo '</div>';
}

Output:

---

After a bit of back and forth in the comments, here is the direct approach to output only the title values as two columns in the desired arrangement:

$db = JFactory::getDbo();
$query = $db->getQuery(true)
            ->select("title")
            ->from("#__content")
            ->where("introtext LIKE '%Still Airing%'")
            ->order("title");
// echo $query->dump();  // uncomment if you want to see the rendered query
$db->setQuery($query);
$resultset = $db->loadColumn();

$halves = array_chunk($resultset, ceil(count($resultset) / 2));

foreach ($halves as $half) {
    echo '<div style="display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; border: solid 1px black; padding: 2px;">';
        echo '<div>' , implode('</div><div>', $half) , '</div>';
    echo '</div>';
}

Note, by using Joomla's query building methods, it is easier to diagnose problems by printing $query->dump().