[Resolved] How do I truncate a line of data from MySQL database?

jasonmills58

Ok, so this code works fine. I just need to know how to truncate the $a_row['newsBody'] line. So if its:

"This is a pretty long news article and I need
to make sure it doesn't wrap in the cell"

I need it to look like:

"This is a pretty long news article and I need..."

Know what I mean? Here's the code:

<?php
$data = mysql_query( "SELECT * FROM news" .$orderQuery. " " .$way." LIMIT ".$offset.", ".$limit );
while ( $a_row = mysql_fetch_array( $data ) ) {
?>
<td><? print $a_row['newsTitle']; ?></td>
<td><? print $a_row['newsBody']; ?></td>

And like I said, it prints out just fine, it just wraps the text within the cell. I guess it would be cool to show the full text in a rollover, but I'm guessing that would be javascript.

cheers!
jason

jasonmills58

I answered my own question, if anyone's curious:

<?php
<td><? print substr( $a_row['newsBody'], 0, 50 )."..." ; ?></td>
?>

🙂

Weedpacket

You might prefer to use MySQL's own SUBSTRING function, and return only the bit you want, rather than move the whole lot over the db connection, only to throw most of it away.

jasonmills58

thats not a bad idea weed, but the truncate is just for display in a list. I'll need the full-text onClick. thanks though!

LordShryku

In that case, you may want to check [man]strlen[/man] first to make sure it even needs to be substringed.

jasonmills58

So, would that look something like this?

<?php
if ( strlen( $a_row['newsBody'] ) >= 50 ) 
{
    $newsbody = substr( $a_row['newsBody'], 0, 50 )."...";
} else {
    $newsbody = $a_row['newsBody'];
}

<td><? print $newsbody; ?></td> 
?>

LordShryku

That would work...