wordwrap data in html tables

kenmarold

I'm displaying tables on an html page and some of my fields are quite lengthy, can someone tell me how I can set a max character length before wrapping to the next line? Thanks! Code below....

// Connect to server and select databse.
mysql_connect("$host", "$username", "$password")or die("cannot connect");
mysql_select_db("$db_name")or die("cannot select DB");

$result = mysql_query( "SELECT username, password, salesperson, hotel_name, hotel_address, description FROM hotel_logins order by salesperson" )or die("SELECT Error: ".mysql_error());
$num_rows = mysql_num_rows($result);
print "<table width=500 border=0 padding=5 bgcolor=#FFFFFF>\n";
print "<td><font face=arial size=3/>Currently there are $num_rows logins setup, please see the list below.</font></td><P>";
print "</table>\n";
print "<table width=600 border=1 padding=5 bgcolor=#DDDDDD>\n";
print "<tr bgcolor=#999999>";
print "<td>USERNAME</td>";
print "<td>PASSWORD</td>";
print "<td>SALESPERSON</td>";
print "<td>HOTEL NAME</td>";
print "<td>HOTEL ADDRESS</td>";
print "<td>DESCRIPTION</td>";
print "</tr>";
while ($get_info = mysql_fetch_row($result)){
print "<tr>\n";
foreach ($get_info as $field)
print "\t<td><font face=arial size=2/>$field</font></td>\n";
print "</tr>\n";
}
print "</table>\n";
?>

Weedpacket

When posting, please use the formatting tags described in the FAQ to make your code easier to read; thank you.

As for your question: [man]substr[/man] and/or [man]wordwrap[/man] provide reasonable first approximations; searching these forums will likely turn up various other approaches to solutions, as the question has been asked before.

Incidentally, you might like to look up use of the <th> element; between that and a bit of CSS you could simplify your HTML somewhat. (You wouldn't need those deprecated attributes or that long-deprecated <font> element, for example.)

johanafm

Validate your code.
table can't contain anything other than <thead>, <tbody>or <tr>. this means that <table><td></td> is invalid. Just as wrong as <table><p>.

With default css values and content that isn't "too wide", just specifying width for cells will do. With "too wide" content, things change a bit. Do note the difference between auto table-layout (default) and fixed table-layout. If you're not using fixed layout, the table and its cell will expand to the smallest possible width to fit its contents.

Here, the long word is too wide to fit in the specified cell width. As such, the table, table row and table cell are expanded, unless you also specify table-layout: fixed;

<style type="text/css">
table {
	width: 85px;
	table-layout: fixed;
}
tr, td {
	width: 80px;
	border: 1pt solid;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<table>
	<tr>
		<td>
			short
		</td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td>
			ipsum lorem etc... andoneverylongwordsomeplaceinthere. which makes the td rather wide...
		</td>
	</tr>
</table>

If you need to know if some words are too wide so you can break them up, you'd have to resort to javascript afaik.