Display chosen article on "read_news.php"

[insejn]

Hi,

 

This is my first post on any php-forum.. I have given up searching the net for my answer. It seems such a simple task but still I cant seem to find the solution. My problem is this:

I'm creating a type of news section on my website where I want to display a preview of the last 3 articles in the database with a "read this.." link under each preview that takes the user to for example "read_news.php" and shows the chosen news from the database. The thing I cant seem to find the solution for is how to create the read this link on the preview-page that takes you to the "read_news.php?article_id=...." and displays the right $article_title + $article_body + $article_written_by + $article_date from the chosen $article_id..

 

I think I get the link to work on the preview.php page with this code:

echo "<a href='read_news.php?article_id=$row[0]'>read this...</a>";

 

..this links to the read_news.php and displays "read_news.php?article_id=14" in the adressfield but the page doesn't show anything.

 

read_news.php looks at the moment like this:

<?
//database connection
$dbhost = 'localhost';
$dbuser = '...';
$dbpass = '...';
$dbname = '...';

if(isset($_GET['article_id']))
{
   $query  = "SELECT article_id, article_title, article_body ".
             "FROM articles_table ".
             "WHERE article_id = '{$_GET['article_id']}'";
   $result = mysql_query($query) or die('Error : ' . mysql_error());
   list($article_id, $article_title, $article_body) = mysql_fetch_array($result;)

echo "$article_title<br>";
echo "$article_body<br>";
echo "$article_written_by<br>";
echo "$article_date<br>";
?>

 

..and obviously this is'nt the right way of solving it. I'm totally lost here and there's probably a really simple solution to this but I cant seem to figure it out.

 

Am I making any sense at all? 

 

/Björn (that's actually Bear in English:))

[stuffradio]

If I understand you correctly... you want to have the last 3 news articles displayed as a preview. Below that preview you want a "read this" link under them.

 

You are going to want to use a while statement to select the articles.

 

<?php
$random_var = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `articles_table` ORDER BY article_id DESC LIMIT 0,3");

while ($article_preview = mysql_fetch_array($random_var)) {
// display the link here. You can limit the number of chars the article prints out, and than after that link to the article id etc. by using $article_preview['article_id'];
}
?>

 

Hope that helps

[insejn]

Thanks for the answer it cleared up some confusions I had about that code. But the main problem I have is to get the "chosen" news on the read_news.php page.

 

The code looks like this on the preview page news.php

[color=orange]// Get 3 news from the "articles_table" table and order them with the latest first![/color]
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM articles_table ORDER BY article_id DESC LIMIT 3") 
or die(mysql_error());  

while($row = mysql_fetch_array( $result )) {
[color=orange]// Print out the contents of each row into a table[/color]
echo "<table width='400' border='0' cellspacing='1' cellpadding='2'>";
echo "<tr><td bgcolor='#CCFF00'><font color='#333333'>".$row['article_date']."</font></td></tr>";
echo "<tr><td><font size='+1'>".$row['article_title']."</font><font class='console'> [ ".$row['article_console']." ]</font></td></tr>";
echo "<tr><td>".$row['article_body']."</td></tr>";
echo "<tr><td><i><font class='console'>Skriven av: ".$row['article_written_by']."</font></i></td></tr></table><br>";

echo "<a href='read_news.php?article_id=$row[0]'>read more..</a>";
} 
?>

 

..How do I get the read_news.php to display the selected news? some sort of $_GET['article_id'] code?

 

And how do I limit the number of chars from the $row['$article_body'] to show for exampe the first 30 chars?

 

[Barand]

read_news.php

<?php

//database connection
$dbhost = 'localhost';
$dbuser = '...';
$dbpass = '...';
$dbname = '...';

mysql_connect($dbhost,$dbuser,$dbpass);                             // these were
mysql_select_db($dbname);                                           // missing

if(isset($_GET['article_id']))
{
   $query  = "SELECT article_id, article_title, article_body ".
             "FROM articles_table ".
             "WHERE article_id = '{$_GET['article_id']}'";
   $result = mysql_query($query) or die('Error : ' . mysql_error());
   list($article_id, $article_title, $article_body) = mysql_fetch_row($result);    // use fetch_row with list

echo "$article_title<br>";
echo "$article_body<br>";
echo "$article_written_by<br>";  // not selected in query
echo "$article_date<br>";         // not selected in query
}
?>

[insejn]

Thank you very much! such an easy and noobish misstake that was I did

 

..but now I get an Error shown instead:

"Error : You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'WHERE article_id = '12'' at line 1".

 

Is the line incorrect to use then? or might something else be the problem?

[insejn]

I got it fixed! it was that query line that was wrong.. I changed it to:

$query  = ("SELECT article_id, article_title, article_body, article_written_by, article_console, article_date FROM articles_table WHERE article_id = '{$_GET['article_id']}'");

 

Thank you guys for all the help!