How can I limit number of characters in textarea?

bumbledore

I would like to limit the number of characters users can input in 'textarea'. I have seen loads of java scripts but they wont work inside the PHP.

Any help appreciated.

TheDefender

All of the JavaScript methods work on a PHP page. That's how you would go about it. Dynamicdrive.com has one in their form effects section. If you can't get it to work, either post for help in a JavaScript forum, or feel free to come back and seek some help getting it to integrate with your PHP code. Either way, we can't help if we don't see your code.

bumbledore

if($summary == "")
						$output .= "<font style=\"color:red\">";
					$output .= ""._SUMMARY.":";
					if($summary == "")
						$output .= "</font>";
					$output .= "</td><td>
					<TEXTAREA name=\"summary\" cols=\"45\" rows=\"4\">$summary</textarea>
					</td><td>

				</td></tr><tr><td>";

This is a small section of a 2000 line portion of the full script, that deals with entering info into various textareas. The 'summary' box is the one I want to limit. I just can`t seem to integrate javascript into the PHP..

drawmack

Here is a full working example. Since Javascript is clientside and php is serverside the two have no direct effect on one another

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
 "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Textarea Length Limiter</title>
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
function limitChars(field,maxLength,dispName) {
    if(field.value.length > maxLength) {
        alert(dispName + ' can only contain ' + maxLength + ' characters.');
        field.value = field.value.substr(0,maxLength);
    } //end if
    return true;
} //end limitChars

function charsLeft(outField,inField,maxLength) {
    outField.value = maxLength - inField.value.length;
    return true;
} //end charsLeft
//-->
</script>
</head>
<body style="width: 390px;">
<h1>Textarea Character Limiter</h1>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Warning:</b> Do not depend on this method to limit the characters as someone
could turn scripting off on their browser to get around this. You must back this
up with a length check on the server side as well or your script will have 
unpredictable results.</p>
<form action="void">
    <div>
        Description:<br />
        <textarea name="description" cols="45" rows="5" 
            onkeyup="limitChars(document.forms[0].description,1000,'Description');
                charsLeft(document.forms[0].remaining,document.forms[0].description,1000);"></textarea><br />
        Characters Left: <input type="text" name="remaining" value="1000" size="4" 
            style="border-style: hidden;border-width: 0px;"/><br /><br />
    </div>
</form>            

</body>
</html>