[RESOLVED] restrict number of words from mysql

ashley98860615

How do you get a certain number of words (or characters if needs be) from a database column? For example a news article could be shown as the first x amount of words and then a 'read more' link would show the rest of the article on a seperate page?

n_wattam

i would takle this a little different... pull the full article from the data base in your varible.

from that point use the

substr($article,0,xxxx)

using xxxx to define the number of letters you want.. i would use letters as appose to words, as then you have a better control to how much content is displayed.

Blulagoon

left(abs,250) as abstract

in your MySQL query would select the first 250 characters from the abs column and make them available as $arrayname['abstract']

HTH - Blu

ashley98860615

I don't understand how to use your option blulagoon

esukf

LEFT() is a mySQL function. You enter it as part of you SQL statement. i.e.

$sql = "SELECT LEFT(abs, 250) AS abstract FROM table";

Blulagoon

lets say you have a table of journal articles with fields of title, author, abstract and body, respectively named, tit, aut, abs and bod. Now, initially you want to display title, author and the first 250 characters of the abstract.

$sql="Select tit, aut, left(abs,250) as abstract from articles";
$result=mysql_query($sql);
while ($row=mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
echo "Title: ".$row['tit']."<br>";
echo "Author: ".$row['aut']."<br>";
echo "Abstract: ".$row['abstract']."<br>";
echo "<br><br>";
}

This will list for you the Title, Author and the first 250 characters of the abstract for every article in your database.

HTH - Blu

ashley98860615

ah thank you, perfect