need help with mysql &gt; php

need help with mysql > php

MattG

I have a mysql database which has a field of text in it for reviews of products, these reviews are typically 1,000+ words and I'd like to divide it into seperate pages so that it's not on one very long page.

First i tried substr(); but it was just too fiddly and cut into words. I then tried a function which could limit it to words but that was also too fiddly and cut into paragraphs.

I am looking to limit it to a certain amount of words per page whilst keeping each paragraph intact instead of running over two pages I attempted to do it by detecting a new line but what I came up with was quite frankly !@$£. Could somebody out there please help me with some code that will achieve this if it's possible.

Many thanks in advance.

leatherback

Hi,

How is your data arranged? By \r\n linebreaks? Or with and tags?

In either case: you could explode the page into blocks of paragraphs by the delimiter, and then rebuild the page while the content is less then a certain size? In the link you then place the number of paragraphs included.

To start from: (Not tested in any way!)

$paragraphs = explode($delimiter, $allContent);

$i=0;
$output = "";

for($size<$maxsize; $size=0; $i <= n_elements($paragraphs))
  {
  $output .= $paragraphs[$i];
  $size = str_len($output);
  $i++
  }

echo $i;
echo $output;

MattG

to output the text from mysql to php I use the nl2br(); function. I'm a relative newbie so could you explain to me exactly how to use the code you provided please?

Do you set the text like:

$output = nl2br($blabla);

and how do you specify the amount of paragraphs it lists?

leatherback

Hi Matt,

I suppose that if you have nelines in your data which give you both the linebreack, as the paragraphs, you could 'explode' your text by two sets of .
In the case below, you set the $maxsize to the maximum lengh (In characters) of the text you want to display. The for loop will check wether the length of the output is less then the maximum defined. If so, it will add another paragraph. Otherwise i will go and display it.
On the other hand you could of course just retrieve a specific number of paragraphs.

Have a try with the script pasted below. You get the text with your database retrieval routine, and insert it in $allcontent.

$delimiter = "<br><br>";
$maxsize = 500;
$allcontent = nl2br($allcontent);
$paragraphs = explode($delimiter, $allcontent); 

$i=0; 
$output = ""; 

for($size<$maxsize; $size=0; $i <= n_elements($paragraphs)) 
  { 
  $output .= $paragraphs[$i]; 
  $size = str_len($output); 
  $i++ 
  } 

echo $i; 
echo $output;

MattG

It's only outputing the content of $i to the page and not $output or more likely $output does not contain anything.

Here is the full code of the page

<?php

require('config.inc.php');
$db = mysql_connect("$dbhost", "$dbuser", "$dbpass");
mysql_select_db("$dbname",$db);

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM reviews where id = '$id'",$db);

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

$delimiter = "<br><br>"; 
$maxsize = 500; 
$allcontent = nl2br($myrow["review"]); 
$paragraphs = explode($delimiter, $allcontent);  

$i=0;
$output = "";

for($size<$maxsize; $size=0; $i <= n_elements($paragraphs))  

  {  

  $output .= $paragraphs[$i];  

  $size = str_len($output);  

  $i++;  

  }  

echo $i;  

echo $output;

} while ($myrow = mysql_fetch_array($result));
} else { echo "Sorry we couldn't find that article!"; }
?>

leatherback

Could you tell me what this gives you?

<?php 

require('config.inc.php'); 
$db = mysql_connect("$dbhost", "$dbuser", "$dbpass"); 
mysql_select_db("$dbname",$db); 

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM reviews where id = '$id'",$db); 

if ($result) 
 {
while ($myrow = mysql_fetch_array($result)); 
  { 
  $delimiter = "<br><br>";  

  $maxsize = 500;  

  $allcontent = nl2br($myrow["review"]);  

  $paragraphs = explode($delimiter, $allcontent);   

  print_r($paragraphs);

  $i=0; 
  $output = ""; 

  for($size<$maxsize; $size=0; $i <= n_elements($paragraphs))   

    {   

    $output .= $paragraphs[$i];   

    $size = str_len($output);   

    $i++;   

    }   

  echo $i;   

  echo $output; 
  } 

} 
else 
{ 
echo "Sorry we couldn't find that article!"; 
} 
?>

MattG

That gives:

Array ( [0] => ) 0

leatherback

Hi,

Looks like there is no data in $myrow[review].
Is the query correct? Is there a row review?
Oh, you do not need "" in the $myrow, I think.

MattG

There is data in $myrow[review]; but only when the while statement is after everything else as part of a do statement with the while statement before your code it doesn't get the data from the db

leatherback

Hm,

not sure what this problem causes. I do see that in my code there is a space after while and after if, that could throw an error. But besides that.. It shoudl work.

MattG

Thanks for your help. From what you've given me a looked up the explode funtion and this is the code which works

<?php  

require('config.inc.php');  

$db = mysql_connect("$dbhost", "$dbuser", "$dbpass");  

mysql_select_db("$dbname",$db);  

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM reviews where id = '$id'",$db);  

if ($result)
{ do {

$maxparas = 5;
$pieces = explode("\n", $myrow[review]);

for ($i = 0; $i <= $maxparas; $i++) {
print nl2br($pieces[$i]);
}

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

else
{  

echo "Sorry we couldn't find that article!";  

}

?>

It needs a little tweeking but other than that it works ok. Thanks for your help leatherback