[RESOLVED] displaying a snippet of the searched word

[kingdm]

Good morning everyone (Manila Time). 🙂

I have a script here that searches the database based on a keyword. It works fine, searching and output, however the snippet wont work ($mess) I dont know what to put so I put the username it only prints the username. I want to print is like that of google. The string that appears below the link. Here is the code. Hope anyone helps me.

<?php
include 'db_connect.php';
if(isset($_POST['submit'])){
	$search = cleanString($_POST['search']);
	if(trim($search) == ''){
		$errors = '<font color="red">Please enter a keyword</font><br /><br />';
	}
	if($errors == ''){

	$query = "SELECT * from users WHERE username LIKE '%$search%' OR emailadd LIKE '%$search%' OR firstname LIKE '%$search%' OR midname LIKE '%$search%' OR lastname LIKE '%$search%' OR city_add LIKE '%$search%' OR city_mobile LIKE '%search%' OR prov_add LIKE '%$search%' OR prov_mobile LIKE '%$search%' OR bplace LIKE '%$search%' OR age LIKE '%$search%' OR weight LIKE '%$search%' OR height LIKE '%$search%' OR gender LIKE '%$search%' OR citizenship LIKE '%$search%' OR religion LIKE '%$search%' OR cstatus LIKE '%$search%' OR skin LIKE '%$search%' OR eyes LIKE '%$search%'"; 
	$result = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error());
	if($result){
		display_form();
		echo "<h1>found ". mysql_num_rows($result)." results</h1><br />";
		echo "<ul>";
		while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_ASSOC)){
			$mess=$row['username'];
			$view = 'page.php?id='.$row['id'];
			echo "<li><a href=".$view.">".$row['firstname']." ".$row['midname']." ".$row['lastname'].'</a></li>';
			echo '<p style="margin-right:100px;margin-top: 0px;">'.snippet($mess, 200, true).'</p>';
		}
	}
}
}

if(!isset($_POST['submit']) || $errors != ''){ 
  echo $errors;
  display_form();
}


function display_form(){
    ?>
    <form id="search" action="<?php $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>" method="post">
    Keyword: <input type="text" name="search" size="30" class="text"  /><br />
    <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Search" />
    </form>
    <?php
    }   

function snippet($text, $chars, $dots = false)
	{
 		$end_char = substr($text, $chars, 1);
        if(preg_match('#S#', $end_char))
        {
            $chars += strpos($text, ' ', $chars) - $chars;
        }
        $ret = ($dots) ? substr($text, 0, $chars) . '...' : substr($text, 0, $chars);
        return $ret ;
     } 
?>

[halojoy]

When you say the snippet wont work
what do you mean?
Does the snippet() not return anything? Or what is wrong?

To test for longer strings, you can just make up some text.
Or copy and paste some longer texts.
And just put them into variable $mess. For testing.

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_ASSOC)){
                //$mess=$row['username'];
                $mess = 'This is my teststring. I will write something very long. This string goes on and on and never stops.';
                $view = 'page.php?id='.$row['id'];

[kingdm]

Thanks for your reply sir halojoy.

The snippet works. It does return a string based on which column is assigned into $mess. What I have in mind is to replace the content of $mess into a string that contains the keyword matches in each column of the database. Like a footprint should I say, a trace of its process.

[johanafm]

I'm not certain what you are trying to achieve, but some things seem odd/wrong.

Your regexp probably doesn't do what you want it to, since you are looking for the character 'S'

 if(preg_match('#S#', $end_char))

Since this calculation includes unnecessary stuff, it's probably wrong, or at least it can be simplified

$chars += strpos($text, ' ', $chars) - $chars; 

+= means add and assign, so the above is equivalent to

$chars = $chars + strpos($text, ' ', $chars) - $chars; 

Which makes it obvious that you could just

$chars = strpos($text, ' ', $chars);

But if my guess is right, you want to cut at the last whitespace before the specified string length

function snippet($text, $chars, $dots = false)
    {
		$p = '#(.*)\s.*$#';

	if ($chars < strlen($text))
		$text = substr($text, 0, 80);
	# Text is allready shorter than it is allowed to be. Everything is shown, so no need for ellipsis
	else
		return $text;

	# Get all text up to before the last white space.
	if (preg_match($p, $text, $m)) {
		$m = $m[1];
		if (in_array($m[strlen($m)-1], array(',',';','.')))
			$m = substr($m, 0, strlen($m) - 1);
		return $dots ? $m . '&hellip;' : $m;
	}
	return $dots ? $text . '&hellip;' : $text;

 }

$s = 'Some text that should be cut, ending in ellipsis. Some text that should be cut, ending in ellipsis.';

echo snippet($s, 80, true) . '<br/>';
echo snippet($s, 80, false) . '<br/>';
echo snippet($s, 400, true) . '<br/>';
echo snippet($s, 400, false) . '<br/>';

Style may vary from language to language or country to country, but from a typographical point of view you should use the ellipsis character instead of three dots.

On another point, you should not use the deprecated <font> element, but rather use CSS to control layout.

<span style="color: red">Please enter a keyword</span>
or
<style type="text/css">
	.highlightRed { color: red; }
</style>
<span class="highlightRed">Please enter a keyword</span>

[kingdm]

Thanks for the correction johanafm. I didn't seem to notice some of those errors because I myself didn't write the code.

Upon editing and analyzing, I came into the question just like what I ask. A snippet like that in google. However, I don't have a field in my database that contains a very long string, so thinking I'll resort to different fields combined in one string. Is there a possibility of doing it?

Style may vary from language to language or country to country, but from a typographical point of view you should use the ellipsis character instead of three dots.

On another point, you should not use the deprecated <font> element, but rather use CSS to control layout.

You're right up until now, I use the font tag, it seems I'm comfortable in using that rather than the span with CSS. Still coping up with development. 😃

[johanafm]

kingdm;10938459 wrote:

so thinking I'll resort to different fields combined in one string. Is there a possibility of doing it?

Just use string concatenation, either in php with the string concatenation operator . or directly in your query, with something like CONCAT(field1, field2) or CONCATENATE(field1, field2).

[kingdm]

Thank you. 😃