Splitting text within a database column

gwh

Hi everyone,

I've created a form with two text fields where the user enters their full name in the first field and their email in the second one. The form is a sign up for a newsletter however due to limited space I could only offer one field for both their first and last names. The information will be inserted into a database and since there's only the one field for both first and surnames, their full name will have to go into a single column in the database.

For other applications though I may need to use just their first name so I was wondering is it hard to separate out the first and last names into two separate columns. I mean could I somehow target a set of characters and then have php look for a space and then have the two name parts separate?

Or maybe it's just better to have the two separate text fields in the first place?

Appreciate any advice.

niroshan

hi gwh,

Its always better to have two different text fields for first name and last name and save them in the database as two fields.

But since you have a limited space problem you can use explode to do the job.

But how can you make sure that user always enter their first name followed by their surname? and what happen if the user has more than one name?

Thanks,
best regards,
niroshan

gwh

niroshan;10947274 wrote:
But how can you make sure that user always enter their first name followed by their surname? and what happen if the user has more than one name?

Yeah I thought about that which is why I really would like to have two separate text fields. I may need to revise the layout to accommodate this.

It's good to know about explode though, so thanks for the advice.