Formatting Text??

treeleaf20

I have this code:

$sqlmessage = "SELECT message 
FROM forum
WHERE $searchby LIKE '%$term%'
ORDER BY timestamp DESC";

$resultmessage = mysql_query($sqlmessage) or die(mysql_error());

if(strlen($resultmessage)>20)
{
$resultmessage = substr($resultmessage, 0, 20)."...";
}

if (mysql_num_rows($result) > 0) {    

for ($j = 0; $j<mysql_num_rows($result); $j++) {
echo "<tr>";
echo "<td>". mysql_result($resultmessage, $j) . "</td>";
echo "</tr>\n";
}
}

Using the code above it gives me a parse error: Warning: mysql_result(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/web/public_html/forum/search.php on line 68

So I was wondering how I can display the text with the shortened version still using the mysql_result??

TheDefender

All you have done is query the DB to get the data into a result array. You need to fetch the results for displaying them.

[man]mysql_fetch_array[/man] needs to come in there after your mysql_query or run your mysql_result immediately following your mysql_query to get the result that you can then use to create the variable you can manipulate.

treeleaf20

Could you possibly provide an example, I'm not really sure how I would display the mysql_fetch_array then to the screen. Thanks for the help.

TheDefender

I have rewritten your code below to have the same functionality as what you are trying to do, only it is using mysql_fetch_array instead. (Which makes a bit more sense for what you are trying to do).

<?php
$sqlmessage = "SELECT message  

FROM forum 
WHERE $searchby LIKE '%$term%' 
ORDER BY timestamp DESC"; 

$resultmessage = mysql_query($sqlmessage) or die(mysql_error()); 

if (mysql_num_rows($result) > 0) {     

while($resmsg = mysql_fetch_array($resultmessage)){
    $message = $resmsg['message'];
	if(strlen($message)>20) { 
		$message = substr($message, 0, 20)."..."; 
	} 

	echo "<tr>"; 
	echo "<td>". $message . "</td>"; 
	echo "</tr>\n"; 
} 
}
?>

Edit: Code edited to correct a typo.

treeleaf20

I tried to implement your solution in the code below. The only problem is that it outputs the same message for every result that is returned even though some results have different messages. Here is the code that I tried to use:

		if (mysql_num_rows($result) > 0) {
   		for ($j = 0; $j<mysql_num_rows($result); $j++) {
		while($resmsg = mysql_fetch_array($resultmessage)){ 
        $message = $resmsg['message']; 
        if(strlen($message>20)) {  

            $message = substr($message, 0, 20)."...";  

        }  

}
			echo "<tr>";
			echo "<td><a href='board.php?command=display&id=" . mysql_result($resultentry, $j) . "'>" . mysql_result($result, $j) . "</a></td>";
			echo "<td>". mysql_result($resultname, $j) . "</td>";
        echo "<td>". $message . "</td>";  

			//echo "<td>". mysql_result($resultmessage, $j) . "</td>";
			echo "</tr>\n";
		}
		}
		else{
		echo "<b><br><br>Sorry no search results were found, Please try again!</b>\n";
		}

Thanks for the continued help!

TheDefender

It's because you close out of the while loop and then try to echo it. When you do that, it will only display the last result fetched. What happens when you implement the code exactly as I have provided it? If that works, let me know, and we can move on to implementing your code into mine... Basically, with what you have, the mysql_result and mysql_fetch_array are kind of working against each other, and there's no need to do it like that combining the two different functions.

treeleaf20

I tried your code and it displays the message but doesn't add the ... after the 20th character. I shortened the limit to 5 and that didn't work either. So after that works, we can get it to work into my code. Thanks.

TheDefender

Sorry, I misplaced the close paren in my post, change that line to:

if(strlen($message) > 20) {  

    $message = substr($message, 0, 20)."...";  

}

And let's go from there.

treeleaf20

Yes that works very nicely, I tried to make it work in my code but couldn't get it to work. Any suggestions on how to implement that with the code I already have. Thanks!