Paginating Large amounts of Data

brockie99

I have a site that displays large articles, and they have to be split over 2 or more pages. I am using the function 'substr ( )' to break up the text and assign set amounts of that data to variables. I am displaying the first lot of text stored in the first variable on the first page, but i need to know how i can transfer the second or even third lot of data to the next page. Does anyone know how i can do this?
Should i create a whole new page/s for the second or third amount of data, or should i just refresh the same page to display the next amount of data?

Here is the current variables with the data:

$first = substr($myrow['fullarticle'], 0, 1200);
$second = substr($myrow['fullarticle'], 1201, 2400);

Thanks for the help

brockie99

sorry, forgot to mention that this data (article) is being generated from the mysql database, and is stored in the variable $myrow.
Thanks

Weedpacket

Attach a query string on the end of the URL that indicates where in the page to start, e.g., http://www.example.com/this_article.php?page=2

And then in the script, use $GET['page'] to find out what page to display. if $GET['page'] is not set, then display page 1. Work out how many pages there are, and if $_GET['page'] doesn't match any of them, display page 1.

PS:

how i can transfer the second or even third lot of data to the next page

You don't need to: you already have it in the database.

brockie99

I think i have cured the problem with the $_GET['page'] function, but now i need to work out how many pages i will need to display the data if i can only have 1200 characters on one page. As you can see from my first post above, i am using the 'substr ( )' function to separate the chunks of data into 1200 characters at a time.
I will be storing these chunks of data separate, but i need to work out the amount of pages i will need to display the whole article. To do this i will use a formula like:

$TotalAmountOfCharacters / 1200 = $NoOfPagesNeeded

So, I need to know how to calculate the amount of characters in the article that i am about to display when called from the database. Is there a function to calculate the amount of characters?? If so, can you tell me about it?? Thanks!

Weedpacket

Yes, both PHP and MySQL have functions for determining the length of a string. Consult their respective manuals for details.