How to limit a string character count in jquery - php

Question

I'm trying to send this text Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, Montreal, QC, Canada through a Ajax post to a php script. I'm getting a 500 (Internal Server Error) when trying to send all the characters in the text.
When I tried 'Montréal-Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau-International' by handcoding, it worked.
Here is my ajax script
$("#nomination-name").focus(function(){
$.post(
'/getlocation/'+$("#newLatitude").val()+"/"+$("#newLongitude").val()+"/"+'ok', // location of your php script
{ place: 'Montréal-Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau-International'}, // any data you want to send to the script
function( data ){ // a function to deal with the returned information
$(".flickr-images").remove();
for(i=0;i<data.images.length;i++) {
$("#images").append(data.images[i]);
}
});
});
Here is the server script:
public function getLocationImage($latitude, $longitude, $cc){
//$place = 'Montreal, Pierre, Elliott, Trudeau, International, Airport';
//GET THE IMAGES BASED ON THE LOCATION FROM FLICKR.
$api_key = 'my_api_key';
$text = Input::get('place');
// $text = 'airport';
$lat = '&lat='.$latitude;
$lon = '&lon='.$longitude;
$perPage = 6;
$url = 'https://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.search';
$url.= '&api_key='.$api_key;
$url.= '&text='.$text;
// $url.= $lat;
// $url.= $lon;
$url.= '&per_page='.$perPage;
$url.= '&format=json';
$url.= '&nojsoncallback=1';
$response = json_decode(file_get_contents($url));
$photo_array = $response->photos->photo;
$count=0;
foreach($photo_array as $single_photo){
$size = 's';
$size2='b';
$photo_url = 'https://farm'.$single_photo->farm.'.staticflickr.com/'.$single_photo->server.'/'.$single_photo->id.'_'.$single_photo->secret.'_'.$size.'.'.'jpg';
$photo_url_big = 'https://farm'.$single_photo->farm.'.staticflickr.com/'.$single_photo->server.'/'.$single_photo->id.'_'.$single_photo->secret.'_'.$size2.'.'.'jpg';
$img[$count] = "<a href='$photo_url_big' target='_blank'><img class='flickr-images' title='' src='$photo_url' /></a>";
$count++;
}
return Response::json(["success"=>"true", "images"=>$img]);
}
I'm trying to remove the space and commas in a string and limit it's count to 20. I tried the following method but is not right.
$('#geocomplete').val().replace(/[, ]+/g, "-").substr(20, $('#geocomplete').val().replace(/[, ]+/g, "-").length)
Is this the right way?

Answer 1

You need to encode the parameter:
$url.= '&text='.urlencode($text);

Answer 2

var data = $('#geocomplete').val().substr(0,20); //get the first 20 characters
data.replace(/\s+/g, '-'); //replace all spaces with '-'