"To substr or not to substr..."

Anon

I have attempted many solutions already given for this undoubtedly common problem, but have not had any luck. So I'm taking it to the brilliant minds around phpbuilder.com 🙂 Any help is much appreciated.

I want to return just the first 20 words from the field "content" in my table "news". Currently, my code is set up to return all data from the field. There are a few options I can use, for example:
select SUBSTRING_INDEX(content, ' ', 20) FROM news
This query works great and does just want I want, but I have no clue how to include it in the following code/query:

//start code

$query="SELECT id, subject, content, newsdate FROM news ORDER BY id desc";

$result=mysql_query($query, $db) or die('The query ' .$query .' returned this error: ' .mysql_error());

if ($myrow = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {

do {

printf("<img src=\"images/news2.gif\" align=\"left\"><font color=\"#990000\"><b><a href=\"http://www.oddshaped.com/index2.php?text=news&num=%s\"><font color=\"#990000\">%s</font></a>:</b></font> %s <br></b>%s<br><br>", $myrow["id"], $myrow["subject"], $myrow["newsdate"], $myrow["content"]);

} while ($myrow = mysql_fetch_array($result));

} else {

echo "Sorry, no news has been entered for today";

//end code

Anyone who helps gets a big hug in return 🙂

Thanks in advance!

jburfield

$query="SELECT id, subject, substring(content, 1, 20), newsdate FROM news ORDER BY id desc";

Try that.

-- Jason

Anon

I think something like this would work for what you want:

$shortContent = substr("$myrow[\"content\"]", 0, 20);

printf("<img src=\"images/news2.gif\" align=\"left\"><a href=\"http://www.oddshaped.com/index2.php?text=news&num=%s\">%s</a>: %s <br>%s<br><br>", $myrow["id"], $myrow["subject"], $myrow["newsdate"], $shortContent);

Anon

Thanks guys -

Andy, this may be silly, but where do I need to place your suggestion in my code?

//start code

$query="SELECT id, subject, content, newsdate FROM news ORDER BY id desc";

$result=mysql_query($query, $db) or die('The query ' .$query .' returned this error: ' .mysql_error());

if ($myrow = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {

do {

printf("<img src=\"images/news2.gif\" align=\"left\"><font color=\"#990000\"><b><a href=\"http://www.oddshaped.com/index2.php?text=news&num=%s\"><font color=\"#990000\">%s</font></a>:</b></font> %s <br></b>%s<br><br>", $myrow["id"], $myrow["subject"], $myrow["newsdate"], $myrow["content"]);

} while ($myrow = mysql_fetch_array($result));

} else {

echo "Sorry, no shows have been entered for today";

}

//end code

Anon

Jason - your suggestion worked quite well, although I changed substring to substring_index (substring returned 20 characters, substring_index returns 20 words).

The query works in myAdmin, but my code seems to ignore it or just return a SPACE instead of the 20 words. Any ideas?

Anon

I figured it out using your suggestion, now come get that hug! heh

The secret was in changing the $myrow call for your query suggestion:
$myrow["substring_index(content, ' ', 20)"]

I had previously left it as:
$myrow["content"])

THANKS, YOU ROCK!