PHP: put first 20 chars of a db field in a string

[tedrodgers]

hi guys,

hopefully an easy problem you can help me with,

i have a field in a sql db that holds a users news post (varchar 500 chars long) , i have a box on my frontpage that
shows the latest 5 news posts, so i need to know how to either put the first 20 chars from the db field into a string to
display in this summary box or just how to limit the output in the box itself.

hope that makes sense.

the code below might help, "newspost" holds the data i need:

<?php echo $row_commentsset['newspost']; ?>

thanks

ted.

[Newsgroup_User]

tedrodgers wrote:
> i have a field in a sql db that holds a users news post (varchar 500 chars
> long) ,

If you're using MySQL, the VARCHAR columns hold a maximum of 255
characters on versions prior to MySQL 5.0. Does your remote server run
MySQL 5? If not, you need to change the column type to TEXT.

i have a box on my frontpage that
> shows the latest 5 news posts, so i need to know how to either put the first
> 20 chars from the db field into a string to
> display in this summary box or just how to limit the output in the box itself.

In your SQL query:

SELECT LEFT(newspost, 20) AS newspost
FROM tableName

That selects the first 20 characters. Sounds like just what you want.

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