[Resolved] displaying small part of text chunk

mistafeesh

I want to show a 'preview' of a lump of text from a mySQL database, of the first couple of lines of the text. I've been trying to use the 'split' command, but I'm getting fairly odd results.

here's my code:

$message_line= split("\\n",nl2br(htmlentities($row_Recordset1['mtext'])));

echo $message_line= split("\\n",nl2br(htmlentities($row_Recordset1['mtext'])));

echo $message_line[1]."\n".$message_line[2]."\n";

what'm I doing wrong? I've tried it without htmlentities or nl2br, and I also tried using chunk_split.

Thanks in advance

zhabala

First of all, do you know, what the function nl2br does ? It converts the \n (new line) to <br> (html tag).

You are splitting text by the \n (new line) but after it is replaced with <br>. Try this one:

$message_line= split("\\n",htmlentities($row_Recordset1['mtext']));

echo $message_line[1]."\n".$message_line[2]."\n";

Zdenek

mistafeesh

I still only get either nothing or a couple of words of the text.

edit - I knew that nl2br made the line endings work - that's all. I guess that's what I get for using bits of example code that I don't fully understand.

zhabala

It depends on how many \n (new lines) are at the beginning of the text. You can print out more lines probably

$message_line= split("\n",htmlentities($row_Recordset1['mtext'])); 

echo $message_line[1]."\n".$message_line[2]."\n".$message_line[3]."\n".$message_line[4]."\n";

Then you will see, whether bigger part is displayed, when yes, then it means, that your texts contain \n at the beginning and you have to avoid them.

tomwerner

I always use the following to show part of the text:


// Limit to 300 characters
$limit = 300
// Count Number of characters
$count = strlen($my_string);

if($count <= $limit) {
// Echo the normal text because it doesn't need chopping
echo $my_string;
} else {
// Echo portion of string with .... glued on the end
echo substr($my_string, 0, 299) . "..."; 
}

mistafeesh

aaaah. substr. just looked it up in the PHP manual after seeing it in you snippet Tom, and that's exactly the command I was trying to find! hoorah. I am now happy again...