Limiting MySQL result to 'xx' characters

[aquilla]

I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction with this. I have a website and on the front page is a list of news posts which have been posted by users. At the moment the news page shows the whole news post. I would prefer it to only show the first 75 characters of the post. I have written the following MySQL code but it only prints one result even though I have 6 news articles in my database.

<?
   // format MySQL DATETIME value into a more readable string
   function formatDate($val)
   { $arr = explode("-", $val);
    return date("d M Y", mktime(0,0,0, $arr[1], $arr[2], $arr[0]));  }

   // database configuration
    $db_name = "news";
    $connection = mysql_connect ("localhost", "user", "password") or die(mysql_error());
    $db = mysql_select_db($db_name, $connection);
    $sql = "SELECT id, slug, LEFT(content,75), contact, timestamp FROM news ORDER BY timestamp DESC LIMIT 0, 5";
    $result = mysql_query($sql,$connection) or die(mysql_error());

  // if records present
  if (mysql_num_rows($result) > 0)
  {
    // iterate through resultset
    // print article titles
      {	
       while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
       $id = $row['id'];
       $slug = $row['slug'];
       $content = $row['LEFT(content,75)'];
       $contact = $row['contact']; 
       $timestamp = $row['timestamp']; } ?>


<li><b><font color="#000000"></font><? echo $slug; ?> </b>- 
<? echo formatDate($timestamp); ?></font> <br>
<div align="justify"> <? echo $content; ?></div>
<p> 
      <?
          }
	}
         // if no records present
         // display message
          else
	{
	?>
         No news items currently available 
        <?
	}
        // close database connection
       mysql_close($connection);
?> 

Many thanks for your help.

Stuart

[aquilla]

Don't worry folks, i've found a solution to my problem. After messing about with the code i've managed to get it to do what I wanted.

Stuart

[mystrymaster]

if you could post the code after you solve a problem you could be helping someone else who is looking into the same problem

[aquilla]

if you could post the code after you solve a problem you could be helping someone else who is looking into the same problem

Sure, here it is. The change was very simple and i'll point it out.

  // if records present
  if (mysql_num_rows($result) > 0)
  {
    // iterate through resultset
    // print article titles
      {      // [B]I removed this bracket[/B] 
       while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
       $id = $row['id'];
       $slug = $row['slug'];
       $content = $row['LEFT(content,75)'];
       $contact = $row['contact']; 
       $timestamp = $row['timestamp']; }   // [B]I removed this bracket[/B]       ?>

Hope this helps someone.

Stuart,