Linking to Article

[xiledweb]

Ok guys, hope I can get some help with this. I'm running a site which has different categories for users to post articles about. On my main page I will have a list of all the recent articles submitted. On my nav bar are links to the different categories which will display the most recent articles about only the news items in that category.

What I want to do is list the first 120 characters (probably more) from the article and use the articletext to link to the full article. Here's what I have so far:

[code]$sql = 'SELECT id,LEFT(articletext, 120) 
        FROM article INNER JOIN articlecategory 
        ON article.id=articlecategory.articleid
        WHERE articlecategory.categoryid=4';
if(!result){
die("sql error: ".mysql_error());
}
while ($article = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
  $id = $article['id'];
  echo '<p>' . $article['LEFT(articletext, 120)'] . '</p>'; [/code]

Could someone point me in the right direction?  ???

[fert]

substr will do what you want.

[xiledweb]

[quote author=fert link=topic=118252.msg483072#msg483072 date=1165890413]
substr will do what you want.
[/quote]

I'm not familiar with substr...

I did however try adding [code]echo "<td><a href=\"article.php?id=$id\">$articletext</a></td>\n";[/code] but it returned the error [i]Warning: mysql_fetch_array(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource[/i].

[fert]

[quote author=xiledweb link=topic=118252.msg483074#msg483074 date=1165890923]
I'm not familiar with substr...
[/quote]
then look it up on php.net

[xiledweb]

I am, but I'm not sure I understand how its going to help me with my problem.

[fert]

[quote]
What I want to do is list the first 120 characters (probably more)
[/quote]
That's what it will help you with.