Monopoly: Board creation

After initially struggling with the board size, I have now decided the dimension. Please review my code. In the code I am generating HTML code using PHP and MySql. I have not added the database, please let me know how to add it in my question.

The key functionality is drawBoard() it has 3 parameters,

• 1 is to determine whether I will increment or decrease,

• 2 determines where to start from

• 3 determines where to end at

Please let me know if further clarification is required. I have also omitted the generated HTML instead here is a picture of what the output looks like. Let me know if generated HTML is needed?

I am looking for ways to improve the code and would like to know whether a more quicker loading time can be achieved. Any general suggestions are also welcome.

Index.php

functions.php

          

                

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CSS

```
span{
display: block;
font: bold 10px "Arial", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
color: #000;
text-align: center;
}
/***
Board Structure
****/
.board {
background: #EBEBE0;
width: 845px;
}
.row{
background: #fff;
float: left;
width: 100%;
}
.left-column{
width: 75px;
float: left;
}
.center-column{
float: left;
width: 20px;
}
.right-column{
float: right;
width: 75px;
}
/****
Board Positions
****/
.position {
border: 1px solid #CFCFCF;
float: left;

When mixing if statements and HTML I and others often use the alternative syntax, which makes it easier to spot what's being closed even though the brackets might have a great deal of distance between them:

if( condition ): ?>
    HTML
<?php endif;

I like the idea of using semantic variables instead of $row[index] but I think there are more elegant ways of making the assignments. For example by using mysqli_fetch_assoc you might get a semantic associative array that you could use and skip the extra assignments, or you could use

list($posid, $title, ...,...) = $row;

To fix the problem that you mention in your edit you could do for example:

for ($i = min($start,$stop); $i != max($start, $stop); $i += 1){

If it doesn't matter in which order you loop through the elements. In this case I guess it does, so you would have to get the sign of the difference ($stop-$start):

$diff = ($stop > $start) ? 1 : -1;

Finally I think that the default values of drawBoard should be numeric.

StackExchange Code Review Q#40654, answer score: 4