Alternating Table Row Colors Help!

[Anonymous Monk]

Hi Monks!
I have this part of my code here to demonstrated what I am trying to do, which is alternating the colors of the rows based on the query results. I know there are many ways of doing this using odd and even numbers, but because of the nature of this particular query results the values of the counter "$i" will not be in order or sequence, this block of code will print the values of $i as:
0 2 14 15 16 19 20
I am thinking that the only way is to compare the values of $i and if they are different assign a value I could use to do the color alternation, but I am running out of ideas, any help would be very appreciated, thanks for the help!

for (my $i = 0; $i < @$sql; $i++)
 {
   my $user = $sql->[$i]{user};
                
   if($unique{$user})
    {
      next;
    }
   $unique{$user} = 1;
                
   my $show = "<a href=\"show.pl?name=$name\">$name</a>";
   my $first = $sql->[$i]{first};
   my $last = $sql->[$i]{last};
   my $tel = $sql->[$i]{tel};
   my $email = $sql->[$i]{email};
                                                                      
+ 
  if ($i % 2)
   {
     $data = "$data<tr><td>$last, $first</td>
                       <td>$show</td>
                       <td>$email</td>
                       </tr>";
   }else {
     
           $data = "$data<tr><td>$last, $first</td>
                             <td>$show_link</td>
                             <td>$email</td>
                         </tr>";
   }

}

[samarzone]

Use a separate variable instead of $i as a flag

my $flag = 0;
for (my $i = 0; $i < @$sql; $i++)
 {
   ...

   $unique{$user} = 1;
   $flag++; # increase the variable

   ...
   ...

   if ($flag % 2)
   ...
   ...
}

[Herkum]

A better option (if available) would be taking a look at JQuery to stripe a table.

[Cody Fendant]

Use HTML::Template and its loop_context_vars option?

You use it like <tmpl_if name="__even__"> [your code here] </tmpl_if>.

[bradcathey]

I immediately thought HTML::Template or jQuery.

Here's an HTML::Template approach:

<table class="newsitems">
   <tr>
      <th>Title</th>            
      <th>Author</th>
   </tr>
   <tmpl_if list>
      <tmpl_loop list>
         <tmpl_if name="__odd__">
            <tr style="background-color: #fff">
         <tmpl_else>
            <tr style="background-color: #eee">
         </tmpl_if>
            <td><tmpl_var title></td>
            <td><tmpl_var author></td>
      </tmpl_loop>
   <tmpl_else>
      <tr>
         <td>No News Items recorded</td>
      </tr>
   </tmpl_if>
</table>

Another nice touch is to highlight rows as the mouse hovers over them:

CSS: 
.follow_mouse tr:hover td { background: #A4D9F7; } /* light blue */

HTML:
<table class="follow_mouse">

[arc_of_descent]

Another way to do this, is to first process the @$sql array and get all the unique users. You can then loop over the unique users and use $i as intended.