Splitting Dynamic Content Into Two Columns

nathaliamota

:rolleyes:
Is there a way to split long text content that is being dynamically pulled from a MySQL database through a combination of PHP and SQL through the use of regular expressions and a bit of CSS? Can anyone give me an example of this?

I know how to split static text content into two columns with CSS, but not text content that is being dynamically pulled from a database...

Note: When splitting the text content into two separate columns, I don't want to split words in half. I want to split the content at a space character.

I really appreciate the help of anyone that responds to this post. I need to figure this out for a project.

Thank you!

NogDog

How I would do it would depend on how the text is formatted and what "rules", if any, you want on where to break it (especially if there is any HTML or other mark-up in it). If it's just plain text and I'm going to use nl2br() to simulate paragraphs, I might use something like (untested)...

$breakPoint = strpos($text, "\n", ceil(strlen($text) * 0.5));
$columns = str_split($text, $breakPoint);
foreach($columns as $col)
{
   echo "<td>" . nl2br(trim($col)) . "</td>\n";
}

nathaliamota

That sound like it could work - I think... But could you explain it to me what exactly that code does - on dummie terms?

Thank you.

NogDog

Briefly: find the first newline character after the middle of the string, use that position in the string to split it into an array, echo each array element in a separate <td> (which you could replace with a <div> or whatever you want).

All functions are described in the manual if you don't understand any of them:

$breakPoint = [man]strpos[/man]($text, "\n", [man]ceil[/man]([man]strlen[/man]($text) * 0.5));
$columns = [man]str_split[/man]($text, $breakPoint);
[man]foreach[/man]($columns as $col)
{
   echo "<td>" . [man]nl2br[/man]([[man]trim[/man]($col)) . "</td>\n";
}

nathaliamota

Thank you for taking the time to post that code and explain it to me. It seems to make sense now. I'll try it out and see if it works. 🙂