command help

[Orlandu]

I know there must be some sort of command that only selects a certain number of characters from a mySQL table. I see it in action on the search page for the forums. It only gets the first bit of the post, and then puts ...

How can I do this for something else?

[Steve Machol]

Orlandu, please go to this (http://www.vbulletin.com/members/vbulletin.org.php) page and enter your username, to show you are licensed. (you will need to use your customer number and password to access that page)
Thank you.

[Orlandu]

But I'm not liscensed yet. This is a PHP forum anyway, what does it have to do with registering? I plan on buying one, just haven't gotten the money yet.

This question doesn't really relate to vB anyway, just PHP. I only noticed that vB used it and it was a great example of what I wanted.

[Steve Machol]

This is a PHP forum for vB owners. Plus I noted in another thread that you already admit to having an illegal copy of vB, albeit you say you're not running it on any sites just yet and you plan to buy it soon.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?s=&postid=243911#post243911

[Orlandu]

Well, atleast I didn't use it anywhere. I wanted to do the right thing, so I told everything straight forward. In a few weeks, I will have a legal vB license. I just wanted a little help with PHP. Sorry I even asked.

[Steve Machol]

Yep, and I commend you for your honesty. Of course once you purchase vB you'll report the site where you downloaded the illegal copy, right? ;)

P.S. You might want to search for an answer in the MySQL forum at vbulletin.com. There are a lot more messages there and it's possible your question has come up before.

[Admin]

Just to answer your question, it's LEFT().

[Orlandu]

So how would that work? Like say I want a news script. And in this script I want it to have only a portion of the news message displayed, and a full story link. How would i only select X amount of characters from the given table?

[Steve Machol]

I believe this is exactly how the PluhNews hack works.

[Orlandu]

Sure there are plenty of news scripts out there, but I want to have my own. Mainly so it is totally custom to my site, and so I can say I wrote my own news script ;)

[Admin]

The MySQL docs are your friend. :) It's either LEFT(fieldName, length) or the other way around, just experiment.

[Orlandu]

Thank you so much. I will look for it, but atleast I have a general idea now. You can lose this if you want cause I got what I needed. Also, this my help in a hack I want to create aswell.