limit textfield to three strings

[MDanz]

how do i limit this textfield to three strings?

 

<input type='text' size='40' name='search' style='font-size:16px; font-family:Arial;font-weight:bold;' />

 

is this php or javascript?  i want only three strings to be allowed entered.

[Pikachu2000]

Can you clarify what you mean by "three strings"?

[MDanz]

three words..

[Onloac]

Well I'm sure there is a better way of doing it but could you just count white spaces and have everything after the 4th white space removed?

[Onloac]

Alright I just did some searching on google and found what your looking for. This does something similar to what you want. I'm sure you could edit it to your liking.

Step 1 of 2
<?php
   
function drupalicious_summarise($paragraph, $limit)
{
       $textfield = strtok($paragraph, " ");
       while($textfield)
       {
           $text .= " $textfield";
           $words++;
           if(($words >= $limit) && ((substr($textfield, -1) == "!")||(substr($textfield, -1) == ".")))
               break;
           $textfield = strtok(" ");
       }
       return ltrim($text);
    }
?>

Step 2 of 2
<?php print drupalicious_summarise($textfieldname,20);?>

$textfieldname = the name of the field you want trimmed.
20 = the number of words, to the nearest sentance, your text will be trimmed to.

[Pikachu2000]

I think I'd use explode, array_chunk, and implode for this one (whether it's the best way or not, I'm not sure). I briefly tested this, and it seems to so what you're after.

 

<?php
$string = 'Giant bunch of words and stuff';
$array = array_chunk(explode( ' ', $string), 3);
$new_string = implode( ' ', $array[0] );
echo $new_string;  // Echos "Giant bunch of"
?>

 

EDIT: If the original string is coming from a database query, you might be able to do this more efficiently using MySQL's built in SUBSTRING_INDEX() function.