Excerpts - Pull content into column, 100 characters max

[jenniferabel]

Hi guys, 

I have created a column in my table titled "excerpts." Just as the name suggests, I'm hoping to create excerpts of each post in my blog with a max of 100 characters. I'm using phpmyadmin, and it seems to automatically generate "0" in my excerpts column, as you'll see on my site here: https://www.visabel.ca/index.php

Here is the code I have. I'm not quite sure what to write here for excerpts, so bare with me:

$sql = "SELECT b.id, b.title, c.name AS category, b.tags, content, b.excerpt, photo, b.date AS pubDate, \"Jennifer\" AS author FROM blogs AS b LEFT JOIN blog_categories c ON b.category=c.id WHERE posted=\"publish\" ORDER BY DATE DESC limit 2;";
                        $result = $conn->query($sql);
                        
                        if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
                          // output data of each row
                          while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
                              echo'

--------------------------

Please help! I've scoured the 'net and can't find the solution I'm looking for. 

[Barand]

Why store the excerpt? You can just select the first 100 chars of the content when you want to display an excerpt.

$sql = "SELECT b.id
             , b.title
             , c.name AS category
             , b.tags
             , content
             , LEFT(content, 100) as excerpt
             , photo
             , b.date AS pubDate
             , 'Jennifer' AS author 
        FROM blogs AS b 
             JOIN 
             blog_categories c ON b.category=c.id 
        WHERE posted = 'publish' 
        ORDER BY DATE DESC 
        LIMIT 2
        ";

 

[jenniferabel]

42 minutes ago, Barand said:

Why store the excerpt? You can just select the first 100 chars of the content when you want to display an excerpt.

$sql = "SELECT b.id
             , b.title
             , c.name AS category
             , b.tags
             , content
             , LEFT(content, 100) as excerpt
             , photo
             , b.date AS pubDate
             , 'Jennifer' AS author 
        FROM blogs AS b 
             JOIN 
             blog_categories c ON b.category=c.id 
        WHERE posted = 'publish' 
        ORDER BY DATE DESC 
        LIMIT 2
        ";

 

Hi Barand, I tried that previously but it still didn't display my excerpt. I'm not sure what's going on...

[requinix]

Have you considered that maybe the problem that should be solved is the one where it wasn't displaying the excerpt?

What code did you have for that, and given that it was not displaying then what was it doing?