createing page with x-number of lines of text

Anon

trying to create a php page template that pulls text from a database, displays up to x-number of lines of text. If there are any more lines of text, I need to generate a 'more...' link/button dynamically (i know how to do that), then display the remaining text on a new page... AND do this with one php file (using functions or objects)...

i thought i had seen an algorithm on a php code library site, but i can't seem to find it again...

any suggestions? any and all help will be greatly appreciated...

please repsond directly to: pratt@kmf.de

Anon

First, prev/next buttons have been explained on this site many times.
Search before you post.

Second, if you post a question here, any answers are mailed to you automatically.

Third, the most important thing about this forum is that problems are solved in this forum, not in private email. This way, we can all leanr from it.

Anon

understood...but that not withstanding: any help?

Anon

Do you mean you have a text of say 100 pages in one database field,
and you want to spread that out over 100 html pages?

If you are just looking for a way to list x search results on one page, use the sql limit function (read manual)

Anon

I think what he is trying to do, Vincent, is display the first few lines of an article, and then display a "Read more..." button like many, many webpages out there do. And don't start yellin at the guy b/c of the Prev/Next thing b/c that is not what he is trying to do. And I'm also interested in discussing this technique.
Justin

Anon

The real question is, are you calling one line one result? If so, and you are using My_SQL, then you're in luck.

SELECT * FROM news ORDER BY news_id DESC limit $show_rows,15

where that 15 is the amount of rows you want to show per page. $show_rows is simply set depending on what the variable $page is set to. For example.....if $page isn't set, set it to 0. Therefore, your first page will display rows 0-15.

Then, you create next page links dependent on that to page 2, posting the link with a dependant $page on. url.php?page=2. By doing that, you change the value of $show_row = $page * 15;

Any sense? I'm gonna let you figure out the next page link @!#$, cause what's the fun if I do it all for you?

Anon

here's a way:

$lines=explode("\n",$text)

will break the text into an array of lines

for ($i=0;$i<$x;$i++) {
echo $lines[$i]."\n";
}
echo "more...";

--
rad

Anon

thanks for the support justin, but i did not search first (I just did, and did not find an answer ANYWAY)...and putting my email in the post WAS bad form...so i concede to some fault...

Here is a bit more detail: using text called from a mySQL database (one TEXT field) - which could contain anywhere from 1 line to 50 lines (or more) of text - I want to put the first 15 or 20 lines of text on the 'first' page, then place the remaining text on a 'second' page accessable by a link from the first page.

What rad replied with (using explode) looks like what I was just experimenting with, and I think I will give that a try. I should be able to just pass the remainder of the array back to itself (using a hidden variable and $PHP_SELF) and generate the second (or more?) page.

Thanks guys for the quick responses...any other ideas or tips would be appreciated...

-jimm

Anon

thanks Chuck G!

but all the text for a particular page is in one field and one record in the table. I did think about using multiple lines / multiple records for the contents of a page, but the text needed to be edited easily by users who have no programming experience, hence the use of a HTML form and a single table field -- makes for a very simple content management system. I just needed a little help in what to do when the client enters more text than what would fit on an 800x600-formatted web page. They did not want scroll-bars on their pages 🙁 ...

You guys prodded me in the right direction...thanks!

-jimm

Anon

If I have understood this you could do.

if(strlen($test) > 20)
{
print(substr($text, 0, 20)."<A HREF=\"page.php\">more...</A>");
}
else
{
print($text);
}

/Staffan

Anon

Staffan, another good idea! and VERY simple! it only remains to cut the remainder of the text and pass it to a 'page 2'.... something like this maybe?

assuming the page is called 'page.php':

$max = 500;
$length = strlen($text);
if ($length > $max) {
$text_page1 = (substr($text, 0, $max);
$text_page2 = (substr($text, $max+1, $length);
print($text_page1 . "<A HREF=\"page.php?" . $text_page2 . "\">more...</A>");
} else {
echo $text_1;
}

...(elsewhere in the page)

if ($text_page2) {
echo $text_2;
}

...any comments / changes / improvements?

Anon

You should definately not pass the text in the url.
That would mean sending ALL the text in the first page, and continue\sending the remainder through the URL to every next page.
What if it's a 4Mbyte text?

Instead, just pass the number of the last line that was printed.
If you print lines 1-100 on the first page, pass the number 100 to the net page.
Then the next page can start printing at line 200 (overlapping a little is easier to read) and print untill line 300. etc....

Anon

thanks for the warning about passing text thru the url, but since there will never be more than two pages full of text, it may not be an issue. i must experiment a bit more...

also, i am not pulling 'lines' of text from a database table to the page (that would simplify my idea, but make it a pain for a non-programmer to edit in a webpage form), i am pulling one text field (VARCHAR or TEXT) from the database and stuffing it into a HTML table cell...so using your #-of-lines idea will not work, unfortunately...

-jimm

Anon

Even if it\'s just two pages of text, you don\'t want to pass that through the url, because you are forcing your users to download the first part of the text in html, and also in a hidden field in the html (so you can pass it in the url)
Then you force the user to upload that text back to you.
And then you make the user download the second part of the text.
That means the full text is both downloaded and uploaded by the user.
Not very user-friendly is it? :-)
Apart from that, what\'s the size limit for an url?

Anon

As I understand this, you allready get text from a database. Why dont you just send some info about wich column to get the text from, like the ID of the column.
Then get it from the database at page2 and print the complete text!

/Staffan Olin

Anon

Staffan,

The client for this project has the ability to change the text for a given page/topic, through a form. The data for a 'page/topic' is kept in a single database column field, with a key to retreive it for the correct page. The amount of text could be one sentence, a half page, a full page, or anything up to two pages. So, without knowing the amount of text expected to appear on the page, I figured it would be better to dynamically generate a second page, if necessary.

Vincent,

In my understanding of PHP as a server-side language engine, the server does all the work and since the interpreter is very fast, I doubt you will notice much lag-time for generating the second page...it is strictly text, no graphics. As far as url length, or more importantly the max length for a form post method, I have sent some pretty lengthy post data for form processing in the past, and have yet to run into a length issue. I think I remember seeing something about the differences between 'get' and 'post', and one of them is length (post being larger I think). Anyway, after thinking some more about my last example code, I've come up with an alternative that does not pass the entire text string in the url:

// set max page length in characters...
$max = 500;
$newstart = $max + 1;

// text is pulled from the database and stored in '$text' (I won't do that here...)
// then we get the length of the text...
$length = strlen($text);

if ($length > $max) {
$text_page1 = substr($text, 0, $max);
print($text_page1);

// create link with a flag set that there IS a second page, and send record#
print("<A HREF=\"page.php?nextpage=1&record=" . $number . \">more</A>");
} else {
echo $text;
}

...(put the following at top of page, so that we check for it first):

if ($nextpage == "1") {
// get record from database using $record as ID (as defined in the link)...
// then extract everything from $max+1 to end of data...
$moretext = substr($text, $newstart, $length);
echo $moretext;
}

other than doing a little logic to make sure we don't reprint the first page again, this should work a bit slicker, and NOT pass a lot of text through the url...

better?

-jimm

Anon

this will probably be a double-posting...

Staffan,

Vincent,

// set max page length in characters...
$max = 500;
$newstart = $max + 1;

// text is pulled from the database and stored in '$text' (I won't do that here...)
// then we get the length of the text...
$length = strlen($text);

if ($length > $max) {
$text_page1 = substr($text, 0, $max);
print($text_page1);

// create link with a flag set that there IS a second page, and send record#
print("<A HREF=\"page.php?nextpage=1&record=" . $number . \">more</A>");
} else {
echo $text;
}

...(put the following at top of page, so that we check for it first):

other than doing a little logic to make sure we don't reprint the first page again, this should work a bit slicker, and NOT pass a lot of text through the url...

better?

-jimm

Anon

It just doesn't make much sense to send all the data twice, let alone UPLOAD the requisted data back to the place you got it from.

It would be even better to use a javascript to display the two parts of text one after another.

The code example you gave is allmost what I would do :-)

I'd just add some code so the text is cut off at a ".", not in them middle of a word :-)

Anon

good idea about searching for the last period in a sentence...for the meantime, I was just gonna end the 1st page text with a "..." (elipsis?) to give a clue that there is still more text (of course, the "more" would do that anyway!)...

-jimm

Anon

You could also begin the second part a few characters before where you ended the first part. very easy to do, and gives the reader a link between the two pages.

end of first part:
what is important is that t....

start of second part:
...important is that the next part