Displaying certain amount of text

Jak

Heya,

Doing a php script, I need to just get it to display the first few hundred characters of text from a sql database (a preview). I've heard of the Left(tablename,200), but I can't seem to get it to work. I'll see if anybody has more luck than I do.

<?
$date = date("m.d.y");
require 'db.php'; 

$query = "SELECT News FROM `news` WHERE `Date` = '$date'";

$result = mysql_query($query);

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
$news = " ".$row["News"]." ";
}
$news = nl2br($news);

echo "$news";
?>

This code works fine, just displays too much text. Thanks!

drawmack

It's not left(tablename,200) it's left(fieldname,200)

<?
$date = date("m.d.y");
require 'db.php'; 

$query = "SELECT LEFT(News,200) FROM `news` WHERE `Date` = '$date'";

$result = mysql_query($query);
    while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
        //you'll want to make sure you don't cut a word in the middle
        $news = str_rev($row["News"]);
        //if we actually retrieved 200 complete characters.
        if(strlen($news) == 200) {
            $cut = strpos($news,' ');
            $news = substr($news,$cut);
        } //end if
        $news = nl2br(' ' . str_rev($news) . ' ');
        echo "$news";
    } //end while
?>

Hope that helps

Jak

Sorry, I knew it was fieldname, just a typo. Anyway, I ran through your code (thanks for the extra error checker thing) and I'm getting this message, I think I've seen it before:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: str_rev() in (filepath) on line 10

Any ideas?

P.S. Thanks for the quick reply

LordShryku

Try strrev, no underscore...

Jak

That seemed to get rid of that error, but give me another one. When I tried putting the Left(blah) thing in on my own, this is the error it was giving me, and the only way I figured out how to fix it was to remove the Left(blah) part. Anyway, it's probably something stupid.

Notice: Undefined index: News in (file-path) on line 10

It doesnt like doing the row thing when the 'left' part is in there....

Thanks again!

LordShryku

You need to alias it in the sql query. Try
SELECT LEFT(News,200) as News

Jak

That fixed it. Thanks a ton.