Splitting text across cells

[Ning_Dynasty]

Hey guys, first post here yay, anyway on to business.

I've got some news articles that I've uploaded into a database which have seperate sections of course, title, author, primer, story ect.

I'm looking for a way to split the story section over two or more table cells in the page. Basically it's like a news paper where the first column contains the primer, author, author e-mail, and then the first part of the story. I need to be able to specify how many characters to display in the first column (and make the last word whole!) then specify the rest of the string to start in the next column or table cell.

:eek:

Thanks guys!

Brian

[devinemke]

1. pull the story from the db
2. split the story into separate words using [man]explode[/man] (using space as the delimiter)
3. split the exploded array into chunks using [man]array_chunk[/man]
4. loop thru the chunks and output the table cells (using [man]implode[/man] to stitch the chunks back together).

[wilku]

Here's my proposition:

<?php
$sample = "This is sample text to be divided. This is sample text to be divided. This is sample text to be divided.
This is sample text to be divided. This is sample text to be divided. This is sample text to be divided.
This is sample text to be divided. This is sample text to be divided. This is sample text to be divided. ";

$result = DivideText($sample,3,20);

echo "<table style=\"width:100%;\"><tr>";
foreach ($result as $col) echo "<td style=\"border: solid black 1px; padding: 5px;\">$col</td>";
echo "</tr></table>";

//FUNCTION DEFINITIONS
function DivideText($sample,$parts,$first)
{
 $all = strlen($sample);
 $col_len = round(($all-$first)/($parts-1));
 $tmp_str = $sample;
 $result = array();

 for ($i = 1; $i < $parts;$i++)
 {
    $s=CutOff($tmp_str,($i==1)?$first:$col_len);
    $l = strlen($s);
    $result[] = $s;
    $tmp_str = substr($tmp_str,$l,strlen($tmp_str));
 }
 $result[] = $tmp_str;
 return $result;
}

function CutOff($string,$length)
{
 $str1 = substr($string,0,$length);
 // first space
 $last=strrchr($str1," ");
 // how many characters  to cut from the end of str1
 $len=strlen($last);
 $len_ok=strlen($str1) - $len;
 $str1=substr($string,0,$len_ok);
 return $str1;
}
?>

It's based on character, rather then word count.