First Words
If you have ever need to grab the first few words of a string, then this simple function allows you to specify exactly how many words you want and even has a tail that defaults to three dots. This, of course, can be changed to a read more link or anything you like. Enjoy!
<?php
/***
* @snarf the first n words from a string
*
* @param string $string
*
* @param int $num
*
* @param string $tail
*
* @return string
*/
function first_words($string, $num, $tail=' ...')
{
/** words into an array **/
$words = str_word_count($string, 2);
/*** get the first $num words ***/
$firstwords = array_slice( $words, 0, $num);
/** return words in a string **/
return implode(' ', $firstwords).$tail;
}
/*** a string ***/
$string = 'Heather was hoping to hop to Tahiti to hack a hibiscus to hang on her hat';
/*** get the first 5 words ***/
echo first_words( $string, 5);
?>
The output from the above script will look like this:
I have recieved many requests from PHPRO.ORG regulars for a method of achieving this same result when SELECTing from a MySQL database, rather than SELECT a whole bunch of text and then drag it into PHP as a variable and then manipulate it. So lets imagine we have a table named animals with three fields, animal_id, animal_name, and animal_description. The animal_description field is a LARGETEXT field and we wish only to snarf the first fifteen words. Our SQL query would look like this:
animal_id,
animal_name,
SUBSTRING_INDEX(animal_description,' ', 15) AS first_fifteen
FROM animals