DB output- Limiting number of words?

heintzi1971

Hello!

I am new here and rather inexperienced when it comes to coding, php and mysql. So please be patient :queasy:

I'd like to display the three lates news from a database in a newscolumn on the indexpage of a website. This worked fine by simply limiting the output.

However, I would not only like to limit the number of outputs but also the length of the text displayed. I like to display only about 250 characters of each of the newstexts. If the reader wants to read the whole story, he/she will have to click on a link that will lead to the news-archives.

Could anyone help me with some advice how to do this.

Thank you very much. I attach a copy of the script below.

Best wishes from Sweden /Felix

<?
$query="SELECT * FROM news ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 0, 3";
$result=mysql_query($query);
$num=mysql_numrows($result);
mysql_close();
?>

<?
echo "<div class=indexnews></b>";
?>

<table>
<tr bgcolor="#ffffff">
<td colspan="5"></td>
</tr>
<tr bgcolor="#A2B3BF">
<td colspan="5"></td>
</tr>
<tr bgcolor="#A2B3BF">
<td colspan="5"><div align="center"><font size="3"><strong>Latest News</strong></font></div></td>
</tr>
<tr bgcolor="#ffffff">
<td colspan="5"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="8"><div align="center"></div></td>
<td width="39"><div align="center"></div></td>
<td width="233"><div align="center"></div></td>
<td width="10"><div align="center"></div></td>
</tr>

<?
$i=0;
while ($i < $num) {

$datum=mysql_result($result,$i,"datum");
$title=mysql_result($result,$i,"title");
$newstext=mysql_result($result,$i,"newstext");
$source=mysql_result($result,$i,"source");

<?
$i++;
}

echo "</table>";

</div>

AsaSchool

I would use substr() in the situation you are in. It gives you the flexibilty to display specific lengths as well as specific locations with a given dataset. If you only want to display the first 250 words from any kind of text I would do the following:

$shortenString = "string you want to use(can also be a variable)";
echo substr($shortenString, 0, 250);

The 0 after the variable tells php to start from the beginning for the text/string
the 250 after the 0 tells php to display 40 characters starting from the position you pointed in with the 0

so:
$shortenString = "string you want to use";
echo substr($shortenString, 0, 4);

would display "stri"

$shortenString = "string you want to use";
echo substr($shortenString, 7, 3);

would display "you"

heintzi1971

Hello again!

That worked! 🙂 Thank you very much for your great and fast help. I really appreciate it!

Best wishes /Felix