Display post excerpts, limited by word count - php

Question

I am working on my php website (Not a Wordpress site) on the main index I display the two newest post. The thing is on the description it shows the entire article I find myself needing to display post excerpts maybe 35 word limit.
<?=$line["m_description"]?>
<?
$qresult3 = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM t_users WHERE u_id=".$line["m_userid"]." LIMIT 1");
if (mysql_num_rows($qresult3)<1) { ?>

Answer 1

<?php
// just the excerpt
function first_n_words($text, $number_of_words) {
// Where excerpts are concerned, HTML tends to behave
// like the proverbial ogre in the china shop, so best to strip that
$text = strip_tags($text);
// \w[\w'-]* allows for any word character (a-zA-Z0-9_) and also contractions
// and hyphenated words like 'range-finder' or "it's"
// the /s flags means that . matches \n, so this can match multiple lines
$text = preg_replace("/^\W*((\w[\w'-]*\b\W*){1,$number_of_words}).*/ms", '\\1', $text);
// strip out newline characters from our excerpt
return str_replace("\n", "", $text);
}
// excerpt plus link if shortened
function truncate_to_n_words($text, $number_of_words, $url, $readmore = 'read more') {
$text = strip_tags($text);
$excerpt = first_n_words($text, $number_of_words);
// we can't just look at the length or try == because we strip carriage returns
if( str_word_count($text) !== str_word_count($excerpt) ) {
$excerpt .= '... '.$readmore.'';
}
return $excerpt;
}
$src = <<<EOF
<b>My cool story</b>
<p>Here it is. It's really cool. I like it. I like lots of stuff.</p>
<p>I also like to read and write and carry on forever</p>
EOF;
echo first_n_words($src, 10);
echo "\n\n-----------------------------\n\n";
echo truncate_to_n_words($src, 10, 'http://www.google.com');
EDIT: Added functional example and accounted for punctuation and numbers in text

Answer 2

I have a function though other people may say it's not good because I'm still good at PHP too (tips welcome people) but this will give you what you are looking for, it may need better coding if anyone has suggestions.
function Short($text, $length, $url, $more){
$short = mb_substr($text, 0, $length);
if($short != $text) {
$lastspace = strrpos($short, ' ');
$short = substr($short , 0, $lastspace);
if(!$more){
$more = "Read Full Post";
} // end if more is blank
$short .= "...[<a href='$url'>$more</a>]";
} // end if content != short
$short = str_replace("’","'", $short);
$short = stripslashes($short);
$short = nl2br($short);
} // end short function
To Use:
say your article content is the variable $content
function($content, "35", "http://domain.com/article_post", "Read Full Story");
echo $short;
Similarly, you can adjust the function to remove $url and $more from it and just have the excerpt with ... at the end.