Hi All,

I am trying to do this simple database task but having a problem...

I want to shorten the names of my products (item names) to 34 characters so I went to the MysQL database and shortened the field type from Varchar(100) to Varchar(34) and it did shorten, however, because some of my item names are quite long, they just wrap to the next line (there in a table cell).

My question is how can I 'cut' or delete the remaining part of the item name so they are only 34 characters instead of wrapping the remaining part of the item name to the next line? Or even add the famous '...' after the maximum characters are displayed and there are more remaining.

Thank you in advance!

-Brian

This will do as you wish..

PHP Code:

$string_length = strlen($VAR_NAME);

if ($string_length > 34) {
$VAR_NAME = substr($VAR_NAME,0,34) . "...";
} 


You just need to change all the $VAR_NAME's to the name of the variable that holds the value.

Hi,

Could you give that to me so I can add it to phpMyAdmin, instead of making a php file out of it?

The reason I ask this way is because I have multiple table that have the same field name. The field that I want this to change is called 'name' in the category table. But I also have 'name' in the users table too. I only want to change the name field in the category table, no where else.

Thank you!
-Brian

Doing it in php shouldn't affect any of the other fields in any of your other queries.

PHP Code:

$result1 = mysql_query("select name from table1");
$result2 = mysql_query("select name from table2");

$name1 = mysql_result($result1,0,'name');
$name2 = mysql_result($result2,0,'name');

echo $name1;
echo substring($name2,0,34) . '...'; 


That code will leave name1 unaffected and will shorten name2.

You can achieve the same affect in SQL directly if you want to:

SELECT CONCAT(SUBSTRING(name,1,34),'...') AS short FROM tablename;