How to select just the first 200 characters of a field

[ToK]

I have a table named "news", wher every colums in the "newstext" field are very large. I wonder how to select just the first 200 characters of every field to show on my web page. I tryed this "$result = @mysql_query("SELECT LEFT(newstext,200) FROM news");". It did not work. I am using this code from Kevin Yank's book:

<?php

// Request the text of all the jokes
$result = @mysql_query("SELECT JokeText FROM Jokes");
if (!$result) {
echo("<p>Error performing query: " . mysql_error() . "</p>");
exit();
}

// Display the text of each joke in a paragraph
while ( $row = mysql_fetch_array($result) ) {
echo("<p>" . $row["JokeText"] . "</p>");
}

?>

Hoping someone can help.
Thanks.

[jofa]

Strange
It's working for me (MySql 3.23.49-nt)

[redemption]

Perhaps you could post the code you are using (the one where you do a LEFT()).

I'm guessing though that you when you tried to fetch it using mysql_fetch_array(), you couldn't because you did not alias LEFT(newstext,200).

[ToK]

Here you have the code:

<?php
$result=@mysql_query("SELECT LEFT(newstext,200) FROM news");
if(!$result) {
echo("<p>Error performing query: " . mysql_error() .
"</p>");
exit();
}

while($row=mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
echo("<p>" . $row["newstext"] . "</p>");
}
?>


It works perfektly iy I skip the LEFT command ("SELECT newstext FROM news").

By the way, I'm using MySQL version 3.23.51

[jofa]

Originally posted by redemption
...you did not alias LEFT(newstext,200).

redemption was 100% correct

Change
$row["newstext"]
to
$row[0]

or

Change
SELECT LEFT(newstext,200) FROM news
to
SELECT LEFT(newstext,200) AS newstext FROM news

[ToK]

I get it:

while($row=mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
echo("<p>" . $row["LEFT(newstext,200)"] . "</p>");
}

It's working perfectly now
Thanks

[jofa]

[off topic]
Fosnavåg, Norway?
Close to Aalesund? (beautiful city!)
[/off topic]

[ToK]

That's right. Have you been there?

[jofa]

A long time ago
Want to go there again