splitting text into pages in php

[bionicsamir]

Hi All,

Does anyone know or have a script that splits the long text called from database into multiple pages ..... just like its done in the articles here on sitepoint.com .... I need the solution to this badly .... I was not able to find it over net. Anyone there to help.

[Andrei P.]

One solution would be to insert some tags in the form where you insert the text:

<Page1>
Content of page one goes here...
</Page1>

<Page2>
Page two goes here
</Page2>

And then to parse it with PHP and in the first page, with the help of the query string display page one:

http://somesite.com/article.php?page=1

Query the database for the article and then with a while loop output only what's between:

echo "<Page".$HTTP_GET_VARS['page'].">"; 

and

echo "</Page".$HTTP_GET_VARS['page'].">"; 

[trogdor1024]

I think bionicsamir is asking how do you chunk the longer text into separate pages (as compared to how to access the pages once they are smaller). Like do you search for a set number of characters, or line breaks, or what... how would you parse the data to make the separate pages?

[Quaint]

You should try to get your text into an array.

If your text comes from an external file:

$fileContents = file ( './path_to_file/file.txt' ); 

Otherwise, if you have it as a string, try:

$fileContents = explode ( "\n", $yourText );    // Splits the text at NEWLINES 

You now have an array. Suppose you want to show the first 25 pages

$i = 0;
while ( $i < 25 ) 
{
  echo $line . "<BR>\n";
  $i++;
} 

Lines 25 -> 50

$i = 25;
while ( $i < 50 )
{
  echo $line . "<BR>\n";
  $i++;
} 

Etc etc etc

I suppose you could work out some smart formula that would allow this:

// Link: yourpage.php?page=2
$linesPerPage = 25;
$startLine = $linesPerPage * $_GET['page'];
$endLine = $startLine + $linesPerPage;

while ( $startLine < $endLine )
{
  echo $fileContent[ $startLine ];
  $startLine++;
} 

[kiltman]

the method used for this is called paging,

theres a nice thread over here

good luck

[nathanj]

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=221515

[bionicsamir]

Hold on.... if I am not mistaken then you are talking about pagination ... which is taking the rows from database and displaying in seperate pages... e.g. 10 rows in first page and next 10 on second page etc...

but what I want to do is this

In my database there is a field with the name body which has article in it .... the article is about 2000 words.
I want the text in article (the text is in html format) to be chopped and displayed in seperate pages ... for e.g. 500 words per page ... therefore the article will come in 4 pages.
And obviously I dont want the pages to be seperated in the middle of the word ... for e.g. there is a word
'Development' and it should not be such that Deve is on one page and lopment goes to other page ...

The above is what I want to achieve .... any help...

[Andrei P.]

I don't have the exact code, but as I said this can be accomplished by inserting tags in your content:


<Page1>
Content of page one goes here...
</Page1>

<Page2>
Page two goes here
</Page2>

and then with PHP parsing them, most probably with the stristr() function, so that you display only what's inside the <Page1></Page1> tags, for the first page.

For example I created a code (uses stristr()) that parses the text from the database before outputting it, and highlights the content between <code></code> tags.

[Quaint]

This is really a pain up your butt, cause you need to add those tags.

I don't have the exact code, but as I said this can be accomplished by inserting tags in your content:


<Page1>
Content of page one goes here...
</Page1>

<Page2>
Page two goes here
</Page2>

and then with PHP parsing them, most probably with the stristr() function, so that you display only what's inside the <Page1></Page1> tags, for the first page.

For example I created a code (uses stristr()) that parses the text from the database before outputting it, and highlights the content between <code></code> tags.

Instead use my code, but add this:

$yourText = wordwrap ( $yourText , 60, "\n" );
// This will split the lines at 60 characters (see wordwrap entry in PHP doc!)
// Above is intelligent -> wraps AROUND words, leaving them whole

// Then use old method:
$fileContents = explode ( "\n", $yourText );

// Link: yourpage.php?page=2
$linesPerPage = 25;
$startLine = $linesPerPage * $_GET['page'];
$endLine = $startLine + $linesPerPage;

while ( $startLine < $endLine )
{
  echo $fileContent[ $startLine ];
  $startLine++;
} 

See my previous post for explanation, but this should work fine!!!