Making a simple blog - viewing entries

[jpoladsky]

Since I am pretty new to MySQL and PHP, I'm trying to give myself something relatively simple to build my skills with. I am trying to make a blog and right now I am trying to set up the back end/ administrative side of it.
I already set up a way to add entries, and right now I am trying to work on a page to view all the entries where you can view it in whatever order, and are given the option to edit or delete an entry.
I have it set up so it creates a table with the following columns:
edit entry
delete entry
title
date entered
entry

I am wondering if there is a way to limit how much of the entry it pulls up? Right now it pulls up the entire entry, making it hard to read all the information.
I'm just not sure if there is a way in the query to limit the results for the entries down to say the first 100 characters or so.
Or if this is done after the query in php or html.

thanks!

[Himegoto]

I think you mean you want like just a brief of the whole blog post?

I used php after the query to cut it down. so something like this:
Blog Title
blog body blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

became this:
Blog Title
blog body blah bla...

$short_length = 30;  //Max # of characters you want to show
$window_caption = "<h1>My Blog</h1>";

while(($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)){
        // make pretty seperator & show blog title
	$window_caption .= "<br />
					<hr width=\"70%\" />
					<br />
                                        <b>{$row['blog_title']}</b><br />";

// Cut down size of body so only a brief view of the full post is visible
$blog_short = trim(strip_tags(substr($row['blog_body'], 0, $short_length)));
   // add ... to indicate there is more than what is shown
$blog_short .= "...";
   // apply shortened post to my html
$window_caption .= $blog_short . "<br />\n";
}

echo $window_caption; //Show full html with all my blog posts

edit: forgot semi-colon... bad Himegoto... shame...

[jpoladsky]

Thanks Himegoto!
I didn't use your exact script but I figured out a way to make it work for my site.

Like so...

$short_length = 30;  //Max # of characters you want to show

// Table header.
echo '<table align="center" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" width="75%">
<tr>
	<td align="left"><b>Edit</b></td>
	<td align="left"><b>Delete</b></td>
	<td align="left"><b><a href="' . $link1 . '">Title</a></b></td>
	<td align="left"><b><a href="' . $link2 . '">Date Entered</a></b></td>
	<td align="left"><b>Entry</b></td>
</tr>
';

// Fetch and print all the records.
$bg = '#eeeeee'; // Set the background color.
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_ASSOC)) {
	$bg = ($bg=='#eeeeee' ? '#ffffff' : '#eeeeee'); // Switch the background color.
	echo '<tr bgcolor="' . $bg . '">
		<td align="left"><a href="edit_entry.php?id=' . $row['id'] . '">Edit</a></td>
		<td align="left"><a href="delete_entry.php?id=' . $row['id'] . '">Delete</a></td>
		<td align="left">' . $row['title'] . '</td>
		<td align="left">' . $row['dr'] . '</td>';
			$blog_short = trim(strip_tags(substr($row['entry'], 0, $short_length)));
	echo'<td align="left">' . $blog_short . '...</td>
	</tr>';
}

echo '</table>';