Re: Show abbreviated article

Try using MySQL to do that right in the query itself (and save the overhead of retreiving the whole blob then PHP'ing the blob too). From the MySQL Doc's ;-) RTFM once at least ---------------------------------------------- SUBSTRING(str,pos,len) SUBSTRING(str FROM pos FOR len) MID(str,pos,len) Returns a substring len characters long from string str, starting at position pos. The variant form that uses FROM is ANSI SQL92 syntax. mysql> select SUBSTRING('Quadratically',5,6);

        -> 'ratica'

---------------------------------------------- For your problem it might look like $sql = SELECT field1, field2, SUBSTRING(blobfieldname,0,160) FROM articles where .... ( BTW I usually assume prox 8 chars per word for something like this so 20 wds x 8 char = 160 chars total BUT you might have lots of esoterica in there and might want to adjust that ;-) ) HTH Tom Henry Cilfa wrote:

Hi, On my website I want to display some articles, in Slashdot style. The main page should only display the first 20 words of the article, and users should be able to click on a link to view the entire article. The articles are stored in a MySQL database, the body of the article in a blob-field. My question is this: how can I select only those first 20 words in the PHP code? I hope somebody can help me with this. Cilfa