Cutting large text's

[benson]

Hello,

I have a problem. The problem is that in a Db i have an large text like around 20.000 chars and 2.000 words this text should be displayed on a page.
But i want the text too be cut around the 1.000 words and the rest too be displayed on a next page.

But the text can befrom 500 to 2.000 + words.
How should i do this ?

[travelbuff]

Use the substr function to shorten the original text:

$short_text = substr($text, 0, 1000) ;

then pass the id of the db entry to another page that will display the full text. Here is an example from a project I am working on where I am only showing the first 100 characters and the going to a page call detail.php that displays the full entry:

 
<?
//select the right rows from the db
$selection = "select * from $ads_tbl order by sitetitle" ;
//create a variable to hold the result of the query
$matches = @mysql_query($selection) or die(mysql_error()) ;
//start a while loop to to create an array called $row for each record that $matches
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($matches)) {
	$id = $row['siteid'] ;
	$ad_title = $row['sitetitle'] ;
	$desc = $row['sitedescription'] ;
	$short_desc = substr($desc, 0, 100) ;
//make a display block to display the results on a html table row at a time
$display_block .= "
<tr>
    <td width=\"25%\"><a href=\"http://$url/detail.php?annid=$id\"><strong>$ad_title</strong></a></td>
    <td width=\"75%\">$short_desc  ....<a href=\"http://$url/detail.php?annid=$id\"><em>read more</em></a></td>
  </tr>" ;
//close the while loop
}
// close the php and start a html table
?>
<table width="98%" border="1" align="center">
  <tr>
    <td width="23%"><strong>Title</strong></td>
    <td width="77%"><strong>Description</strong></td>
  </tr>
<? //open a php block to populate the table
echo "$display_block" ;
//close the php block and then the table
?>
</table>

HTH

[benson]

But that does cut up word doesn't it ?

It is an good idea though.

[travelbuff]

Yes, it does. I am sure you could come up with a pregex to prevent that, if it is a big deal. Are you wanting to preview the text or just break it into more manageable pages?

Another thought, you said the text could be from 200 to several thousand characters, you may want to check string lenght first using strlen before breaking it up.

[benson]

I shall try too explain it more and better this time.

I have users wich can submit their selfmade articles into an db.
This articles contain both numbers and letters and html img tags and suchs.

When this is displayed (no preview or such).
I want the articles bigger than 10.000 characters to be cut into two pages letting the html intact. !!

I have just no idea how too do this.

[travelbuff]

I get it - see if this helps Pagination Tutorial
and there are more here .

[benson]

i know what pagination is.
But i don't need an pagination script.

The thing that have too be done:
Detect if the article exeeds 10.000 chars :> strlen($text);
Cut it in two :> substr($text, 0, 10000) //first page
substr($text, 10000, strlen($text)) //page two

But i want the html tags and words too be intact !!

[travelbuff]

Pagination is breaking up large chunks of text into reasonably sized pages. It is exactly what you need 🙂

Even if you don't follow the tutorial exactly it will show you how it is done.

[benson]

i know that that isn't it.

[benson]

So i given up my main idea.

Now i've thought of an brake or something too mark the end of an story page by the user.
(Wich i personally do not want too implement, but i have too come up with something)

Examp.

Are you interested in contributing an article to the PHP Builder community, but you can't seem to find a topic?
{new page}
Check out our Article Ideas/Request forum, and see if there's a request for your area of expertise.

(end examp.)

So the script can get the first char pos from the {new page} line.
And then say substr($text, 0,first char-1).
And for the next page substr($text, first char+10, strlen($text))

Or something.
But how could i do this with multiple {new page} tags ??