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SELECT part of a field
Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2005 3:03 pm
by traffic
Hello...
I have a field in my database that is a 'text' field - post_text...
I want to be able to select just the first (500) characters in the field - but, can't seem to find any documentation for this...
Any help would be appreciated...
...
Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2005 3:11 pm
by yum-jelly
Have a look at MySQL
String function... A little searching never hurt,
SUBSTRING()
Code: Select all
SELECT SUBSTRING(text_column_name, start_position, end_position) AS text FROM articles WHERE article_id = some_id;
Where as....
text_column_name = post_text <- your column name
start_position = where you want to start the string <- would be * 0 * if you want the first five hundred characters
end_position = where you want to end the string <- would be * 500 * if you want the first five hundred characters (number of character to grab [len])
yj
Re: SELECT part of a field
Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2005 3:22 pm
by RobertGonzalez
traffic wrote:Hello...
I have a field in my database that is a 'text' field - post_text...
I want to be able to select just the first (500) characters in the field - but, can't seem to find any documentation for this...
Any help would be appreciated...
...
Use the MySQL
LEFT() function, like this...
Code: Select all
$sql = "SELECT LEFT('fieldname', 500) FROM table";
Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2005 5:09 pm
by Grim...
If you want to do it with PHP (this is the PHP forum, after all) get the field as normal, then use
Code: Select all
$post_text = substr($post_text, 0, 500);
However, using SQL will be a tiny bit faster, and is the better way to do it.