Restrict number of characters entered

[TobyRT]

Hi,

I'm trying to figure out how to restrict the number of characters that a user can enter into a specific textarea - I know you can do it in an <input> tag, but not with a <textarea>.

Does anyone know a way I can do this either in html, or a line of validation I can use in the PHP to do this? I'm guessing some kind of if count('$mytextarea' > 250){echo 'Too long - make it shorter} or something, but I'm really not sure on the syntax.

Any advice please?

Ta muchly!

[TobyRT]

Sometimes my own stupidity astounds me (see signature) - it was strlen() I was looking for.

Problem is, I've decided that 250 characters is too short - i want to change my field type to text, with a limit of 350 characters - when i try and do this though, it gives me this error message:

SQL-query: [Edit]

ALTER TABLE sypcms.events CHANGE eventshort eventshort TEXT (350) not null
MySQL said: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '(350) not null' at line 1

What's that all about?!

[Sayian]

Why dont you just use a javascript function to limit the amount of char's they can enter , then when that limit is reached , use a javascript alrt box to tell them their limit is reached , any further char's will be truncated.

Im in a good mood , so ill even provide you with a function to use

function textLimit(field, maxlen) {
if (field.value.length > maxlen + 1)
alert('You have reached the Maximum Amount of Letters!');
if (field.value.length > maxlen)
field.value = field.value.substring(0, maxlen);
}

Then in the text area you want to limit.

onkeyup="textLimit(this.form.note, 1000);

1000 Being the number of char's you want to limit , you can change this.

Cheers.

[TobyRT]

For one reason I'd rather do it in PHP - the code is shorter 🙂

For another, there's a matter of principle - why'm I getting this error message when i try and change my field?