Grabbing a number of words from a database field

[ZieST]

Hey

I am creating a press releases for a site. I want to know how, the best and easiest way to pull a certian number of words from a db field then output it with a "more" link at the end so they can see the rest of the article

Thanks
ZieST

[jburfield]

If you are using MySQL check out the substring() and substring_index() functions.

You can something like the following:

$query = "SELECT id, concat(substring(text, 1, 25), "...") from TABLE where XXX=XXX";

That will give you the first 25 words of the TEXT field followed by '...' you can then add a MORE link that links to the whole story.

Substring_index() is maybe a better fit though, you can have it stop on a space (between words) and it looks a bit better.

-- Jason