[RESOLVED] Limit the number of characters of an echo.

jamjam

Hello again

I'm trying to limit the number of charcters displayed by an echo statement.

I have read that best way to do this is using a built in function of MySQL rather PHP.

However I am having difficulty executing this.

Here's my code, which outputs however many characters in the row it finds.

<?php echo $row_H2['programme']; ?>

I have tried

<?php echo $row_H1=mysql_query("SELECT programme, SUBSTRING(text, 1, 50)"); ?>

But it does not working.

Can some please give some pointers.

Thanks

laserlight

Err... why don't you try to get the code working without the use of SUBSTRING? At the moment, it looks horribly wrong. Once you have that code working, adding the use of SUBSTRING should be relatively trivial since it just means a small edit to the SQL statement.

jamjam

The code does work.

But I don't know how to edit the SQL to limit the number of characters

Any suggestions?

jamjam

Sorry, Here is the SQL

mysql_select_db($database_highlights, $highlights);
$query_H1 = "SELECT * FROM highlights WHERE id = 1";
$H1 = mysql_query($query_H1, $highlights) or die(mysql_error());
$row_H1 = mysql_fetch_assoc($H1);
$totalRows_H1 = mysql_num_rows($H1);

laserlight

Ah. Instead of SELECT *, select the specific columns that you want. Test. Then, change that particular column to be a SUBSTRING expression.

jamjam

Got it working

You right laserlight, just needed minor adjustments in the SQL.

Something like this

mysql_select_db($database_highlights, $highlights);
$query_H1 = "SELECT SUBSTR(programme,1,6)  FROM highlights  WHERE id = 1";
$H1 = mysql_query($query_H1, $highlights) or die(mysql_error());
$row_H1 = mysql_fetch_assoc($H1);
$totalRows_H1 = mysql_num_rows($H1);

And echo statement

<?php echo $row_H1['SUBSTR(programme,1,6)']; ?>

Thanks for the pointers, they put in the right direction.

dagon

i suggest using an alias in the mysql, makes it a little 'cleaner'

$query_H1 = "SELECT SUBSTR(programme,1,6) as h1  FROM highlights  WHERE id = 1"; 

<?php echo $row_H1['h1']; ?>

laserlight

jamjam wrote:
Thanks for the pointers, they put in the right direction.

You're welcome 🙂

Besides dagon's suggestion, there is one more thing that you might want to consider: instead of using the legacy MySQL extension, use the MySQLi extension or PDO extension.