Only display a certain number of chars? (and other problems)

[Ember]

Ok, I am working on making a news script for a new site... I have currently come up with these problems:

I want to show a snippet of the news post on the main page, but how can i restrict the number of characters that are displayed?

For example - "Yadda Yadda has died today after an assasination in his home..."

I only want it to display a certain number of characters or words, or whatever I can restrict! Can anyone help me with that?

Also...

Can anyone tell me an effective way to have user comments on news posts, I thought of having a table called "comments" and then a "postid" field... and then displaying all the comments where the postid=1 or whatever, but how do I set postid from one table and then read it in another?

Please help me in as plain-english as possible, I havent been into this PHP stuff too long, I have made some scripts though, so I know a fair bit.

Thanks for your time!

[Ember]

Here's the query I have at the moment:

PHP Code:


<?

$sqlhostname = "localhost";
$login = "******";
$password = "******";
$base = "******";

$db_connect = mysql_connect($sqlhostname,$login,$password);
$base_selection = mysql_select_db($base,$db_connect);

$query = "SELECT * FROM gaming_news ORDER BY id  ASC  LIMIT 0,1";
$req = mysql_query($query);

if (!$req)
{ echo "<B>Error ".mysql_errno()." :</B> ".mysql_error()."";
exit; }
$res = mysql_num_rows($req);

if ($res == 0)
   { echo "<center><b>Sorry there is no result.</b></center>";}
else 
   { while($row = mysql_fetch_array($req))
            {
               extract($row);

                      echo"<img src=\"images/newslatest.gif\" align=\"left\"><b>$headline</b> posted by: <b>$author</b> - $story_text... <br>[<b>read full story</b>]

";
    }
mysql_free_result($req);
}

?>

I'll be wanting to limit $story_text

Hope that helps you to help me!

[Kevitt]

Originally posted by OrangeCow.net
Ok, I am working on making a news script for a new site... I have currently come up with these problems:

I want to show a snippet of the news post on the main page, but how can i restrict the number of characters that are displayed?

For example - "Yadda Yadda has died today after an assasination in his home..."

I only want it to display a certain number of characters or words, or whatever I can restrict! Can anyone help me with that?

For this use the SUBSTR() function like so...

PHP Code:

echo substr($MY_SNIPPET,0,100); 


this would show the first 100 characters in that snippet.

[Kevitt]

whoa! instaposted!

[Ember]

Thanks, but how would I work that into my current query?

[Ember]

Thats quite mad, lol!

[Kevitt]

I've adjusted your code to spit out the first 100 chars. Look at the line where $story_text is located. Notice $story_text has now become ".substr($story_text,0,100)."

Hope that helps

PHP Code:

<?

$sqlhostname = "localhost";
$login = "******";
$password = "******";
$base = "******";

$db_connect = mysql_connect($sqlhostname,$login,$password);
$base_selection = mysql_select_db($base,$db_connect);

$query = "SELECT * FROM gaming_news ORDER BY id  ASC  LIMIT 0,1";
$req = mysql_query($query);

if (!$req)
{ echo "<B>Error ".mysql_errno()." :</B> ".mysql_error()."";
exit; }
$res = mysql_num_rows($req);

if ($res == 0)
   { echo "<center><b>Sorry there is no result.</b></center>";}
else 
   { while($row = mysql_fetch_array($req))
            {
               extract($row);

                      echo"<img src=\"images/newslatest.gif\" align=\"left\"><b>$headline</b> posted by: <b>$author</b> - ".substr($story_text,0,100)."... <br>[<b>read full story</b>]

";
    }
mysql_free_result($req);
}

?>

[Ember]

thanks very much, i'll keep you posted on how the site comes along!