word count returns result only for half of my query results
I have a script to select 5 latest articles and display its title, thumbnail image and 20 words of each article content in a news column on the homepage, however only 2 of the query results display those 20 words of the article content. Either the first 3 or the last three do not display those 20 words of the article content depending if I ORDER BY date ASC (or DESC). Its very weird and I can't find what is the cause of the behaviour. I am using a function to shorten the article to the required 20 words (function 1 - below) and a code on the homepage to go through the query results and display those 5 shortened articles. Can anyone please help me to find the mystery? Thanks a lot to everyone.
function shorten_string($string, $wordsreturned) {
//returns the first required number of words ($wordsreturned)
//if string has less words than $wordsreturned the entire string is returned
$retval = $string;
$array = explode(" ", $string);
if(count($array)<= $wordsreturned) { // short enough already
$retval = $string;
} else { // removing words over $wordsreturned
array_splice($array, $wordsreturned);
//echo $wordsreturned." ";
$retval = implode(" ", $array)."...";
}
return $retval;
}
//code from the homepage
<?php
$query = "SELECT * FROM tblnews ORDER BY created DESC LIMIT 5";
$news_set = mysql_query($query, $connection);
confirm_query($result);
if(mysql_num_rows($news_set)>=1) {
while ($article = mysql_fetch_array($news_set)) {
echo "<div class=\"news-feed-column-box\">";
echo "<a href=\"news.php?nid=".$article['nid']."\"><h4 class=\"news-feed-title\">".$article['newstitle']."</h4></a>";
if(!empty($article['image_name'])) {
$image = "../image_dir/".$article['image_name'];
echo "<img src=\"includes/show_thumbnail.php?filename=".$image."&width=45&height=30\" class=\"news-img\" />";
}
echo "<p class=\"news-feed\">".shorten_string($article['content'], 20)."</p>";
echo "</div>";
}
}
?>
I afraid that some of your articles beak the HTML. Please generate HTML source and look at.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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For safe shortening replace:
$array = explode(" ", $string);
with
$array = explode(" ", strip_tags($string));
$array = explode(" ", $string);
with
$array = explode(" ", strip_tags($string));
ASKER
The thing is why does it work for two out of five and not for all of them when its basically looping through .. if there was something totally wrong.. none of them would display, no? But I may be wrong.. I will still try some of these tips and very grateful, guys, thanks
ASKER
flob9, thanks a lot!!! You hit the nail! Now, can you please explain to me why my simple statement worked only for 2 and this works for all of them. What exactly does it do? I am still a student and learning. It really helps if PRO's explain these things in plain words sometimes..
The ereg_replace removes duplicates spaces. The strip_tags remove html tags from the string.
$array = explode(" ", ereg_replace(' +',' ',$string));