Printing just a Portion of a text

[Raioo]

Hello,

I have this article that's like 300 words. It is stored in a table in database mysql. I need to display only a few words from this article in the front page then print "read full article"

is there a specific function in PHP that allows me to give it the string variable (the whole article after it's been queried from the db) , and... the number of spaces to count before stopping so that I can tell it something like:

$article_motivation = give_me_few_words( $article, " ", 20 );

meaning look for 20 spaces (.. 20 words..) and stop and return me that string.

please help,
Thanks,
Adnane

[freddydoesphp]

You can do it in the query,

select field1, substring_index(fieldtotruncate, ' ', 20) as shortfield from tablename;

Change 20 to be how ever many words you want. and yes that is a space between the single quotes. "fieldtotruncate" should be the mysql fieldname of the column where the data is.

[aspen]

to add on to what freddy said

Its better to do it in the query itself as if you did it with the PHP MySQL would have to send you the full article - this way you only get sent the part you need.