reduce string lenght

You might consider adding a ... after too, and maybe a title tag that shows the full text when the user moves over the mouse:

$full_str = 'this is a very long string, this is a very long string, this is a very long string, this is a very long string, and it keeps going and going and going, it doesn't get any shorter...it just keeps getting longer and longer.';

echo '<p title="' . $full_str . '">' . substr($full_str,0,100) . '...</p>';

You could also take that one step further and break the string on a space character:

preg_match('/.{1,100}(?=\s|$)/',$str,$match);
$result=$match[0];

                                              

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Hi and thanks to you all
I amy trying this one first but I must be doing something wrong as it is not working for me.

$body=substr($body, 0,100);

rhiannon1, how is that not working?

consider this test code:

<?php
$body="short test";
$body=substr($body, 0,100);
echo $body;
echo '<hr>';
$body="long test long test long test long test long test long test long test long test long test long test long test";
$body=substr($body, 0,100);
echo $body;
?>

                                              

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Hi and thanks. I am sorry for not understanding this properly - it is me not you for not explaining what I need to do and for me just learning.  Here is the result of your code and mine underneath which is passing the link, category, title and description from the checkbox.  What I need to do is display the title, link and description to the page using a query and minimise the body (description) to 100 characters.

short test
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
long test long test long test long test long test long test long test long test long test long
test 'http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/132886.php' 'Smoking / Quit Smoking' 'Tobacco Consumption Among Minnesota Teens Continues To Decline' 'The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) today announced results of a new survey showing that tobacco use among Minnesota's teens continues to decline. The 2008 Minnesota Youth Tobacco Survey provides a wide range of data on tobacco use among teens over the past three years. Among the findings: - The percentage of middle school students who used any tobacco products in the past 30 days fell from 9.5 percent to 6.9 percent.'

If you echo $row['$body'] and it contains the entire string you want to truncate, instead of:
echo"<td>".$row ['$body']."</td>";

Consider:
preg_match('/.{0,100}(?=\s|$)/',$row['$body'],$match);
echo"<td>$match[0]...</td>";

 I have taken out my own echo statement as what i have done is incorrect and stopping your code from working properly.  Can you please advise the correct  statement to display the items from subscriber  to include title, link and body  I have been getting multiple headings and = signs for all the boxes and not just the ones I have ticked.  I am missing something to do with the while loop.Thanks again for your time.

<?php
//
$body1= file_get_contents($article);
$body2=strip_tags($body1);
$body=mysql_real_escape_string($body2);
 
//load xml file
$root = simplexml_load_file("http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/rss/smoking.xml");
//if submit button pressed display save articles
if($_POST['save'])
 
{
//if checkbox selected save selected articles to database
$box=$_POST['check'];
 
}
 
foreach ($root->channel->item as $roo){
//convert link to printerfriendlynews
$friendly = str_replace(array ('.php', 'articles/'), array ('', 'printerfriendlynews.php?newsid='), $roo->link);
 
$link=$roo->link;
//remove string characters
//declare variables to add to database
$link = mysql_escape_string($roo->link);
$cat = mysql_escape_string($roo->category);
$mytitle = mysql_escape_string($roo->title);
$body = mysql_escape_string($roo->description);
$subscriberID = mysql_escape_string($_SESSION['email']);
 
	while (list ($key,$val) = @each ($box)) 
	
{
 
echo "$val<br>"; 
}
//insert variables into article database 
	if ($link==$link) {
		$db->exec("insert ignore into article (subscriberID, link, title, category, body)  VALUES ('$subscriberID','$link','$mytitle','$cat','$body')" );
		
		}
		else
		{
		
		echo "there has been an error</br>";
		}
 
		}
?>
                                              

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I'll have to leave this for a db expert, I was just answering the string truncation question.

@rhiannon1: If what you posted above is really the program code, then the syntax is causing the code to never get the data back from the query!  Your code should probably look something like this...

HTH, ~Ray

// RUN THE QUERY
$result = mysql_query($query) or die ("Error in query: $query. ".mysql_error());
 
// NO DATA - JUST QUIT
if (!mysql_num_rows($result)) die( " NO DATA " );
 
// TABLE DEFINITION OUTSIDE QUERY ITERATOR
echo "<table cell padding=10 border=1>";
 
// ITERATE OVER RESULTS SET
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
{
 
// GET CONVENIENT LOCAL VARIABLES
   extract($row);
   
// SHRINK THE BODY
   $shrunken_body = substr($body,0,100); // OR ADD ELLIPSES
 
// ECHO THE ROW OF DATA
   echo "<tr>";
   echo "<td>$mytitle</td>";
   echo "<td>$link</td>";
   echo "<td>$shrunken_body</td>";
   echo "</tr>\n";
 
// END ITERATOR   
}
 
// END TABLE
echo "</table>\n";
                                              

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Also, check the HTML carefully.  Look out for this:

echo "<table cell padding=10 border=1>";

Should be this instead:

echo "<table cellpadding=10 border=1>";

Hi and thanks for stepping in too.
I have added what you said and added my select as shown in front
// RUN THE QUERY
"SELECT title, link, category, body FROM subscriber WHERE where subscriberID = '$email'";
$result = mysql_query($query) or die ("Error in query: $query. ".mysql_error());

Unfortunately it is returning an empty set and there are entries in there.  Is my syntax still wrong?
Thanks

If you are not getting a mysql error that says "syntax error" your syntax is not wrong.  That means, in essence, that you have a data-dependent issue and you need to look for the issue in the rows of data.

When you say, "there are entries in there" - how do you go about verifying this?  Do you use phpMyAdmin?  Have you used var_dump() to print out the query and/or the rows that it returns?

Also, instead of posting a single SELECT statement, it helps to post enough of the code that we can see where the variables come from, what the logic is, etc.  Thanks, ~Ray

Hi
It is my syntax that is wrong.  I have two tables with the following info:
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `subscriber`;
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `subscriber` (
  `email` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `name` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `password` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `admin` tinyint(1) NOT NULL,
  `lastlogin` datetime NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`email`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

-- --------------------------------------------------------

--
-- Table structure for table `article`
--

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `article`;
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `article` (
  `articleID` mediumint(8) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `subscriberID` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `link` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `title` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `category` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `body` text NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`articleID`),
  UNIQUE KEY `userLink` (`subscriberID`,`link`),
  KEY `subscriberID` (`subscriberID`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;


--
-- Constraints for table `article`
--
ALTER TABLE `article`
  ADD CONSTRAINT `article_ibfk_1` FOREIGN KEY (`subscriberID`) REFERENCES `subscriber` (`email`) ON UPDATE CASCADE;

When I am selecting an article, it is saving no problem into the database.  Ir is my syntax that is incorrect.  I need to display the link, title category and body where if logged on, the subscriber id = email.  
I have tried the following query(and several others) and keep getting an empty set,
("SELECT article.link, article.title, article.category, article.body FROM article WHERE article.subscriberID = $email");

Can you tell me please where I have gone wrong here.  Thank you.

I think ddrudik and I did our best to help, answering the questions as they were cast (and recast).  Any reason why there would not be a split of points on this one?

Thanks, ~Ray

Sincere apologies for the dela in my reply to you due.  Thank you for your help.