PHP get where category does not equal these 3

[Anonymous]

in a blog site im working on i have 3 categories of blogs and than a “other” category where the blog there does not match the 3 categories. So i want to select the categories that does not equel motivational, financial, personal. I tried something like this but it didn’t work.

SELECT * FROM articles WHERE category !=’financial’, ‘motivational, ‘personal’

[Justin]

Try writing your SQL like this:

SELECT *
FROM articles
WHERE category != ‘financial’,
OR category != ‘motivational’,
OR category != ‘personal’

You have to tell SQL which operation to perform for each category

Hope this helps!

[Anonymous]

Its giving me this error mysql_fetch_array() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in

This is how i have it written

$sql = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM articles WHERE category !='personal', OR category !='financial', OR category !='motivational'");

[[email protected]]

Use “in” instead, much cleaner:

SELECT * FROM articles WHERE category not in(‘financial’, ‘motivational’, ‘personal’);

Should work!

[__]

SELECT *
FROM articles
WHERE category != ‘financial’
OR category != ‘motivational’
OR category != ‘personal’

This won’t filter anything. Any given value will “not be” at least two of these, so you will be selecting everything. Use AND instead of OR. Alternatively, use IN as @dalbertsson suggested.

mysql_fetch_array() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given ...

“boolean” is true or false. Your query returned false. (We know it’s false because mysql_query never returns true, but does return false – when there is an error.) You need to be checking your query result before trying to use it:

<?php

// no!
$result = mysql_query( "some sql" );
$row = mysql_fetch_array( $result );

// yes!
$result = mysql_query( "some sql" );
if( $result ){
    $row = mysql_fetch_array( $result );
}
else{
    /* there was an error */
}

$sql = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM articles WHERE category !='personal', OR category !='financial', OR category !='motivational'");

The error is coming from the commas you have before each OR – they don’t belong. (But don’t fix this query – use another (above)).

And, finally (and I know this may not be possible right away), you should seriously consider not using the mysql_* functions. They are deprecated. (They haven’t been “recommended” since 2004.) mysqli or pdo are good alternatives.

[Anonymous]

Thank you. That worked perfectly. Now i’m not sure how i can include character limits here. I’m not exactly sure how to set it combining all this. I want to limit the content characters to 500 in the other page where the article previews are displayed. Also descending order. How can i achieve that? this is what i currently have.

$sql = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM articles WHERE category NOT IN('financial','motivational','personal')");

[__]

I want to limit the content characters to 500 in the other page where the article previews are displayed.

example from another forum I frequent:

<?php

// say your article is in the var $article 
// $preview starts as the entire article 
$preview = $article

// check if the preview needs to be shortened 
if (strlen($preview) > 500) {

    // chop off at 500 characters
    $preview = substr( $preview,0,500 );

    // take off the last [possibly partial] word, for neatness
    $preview = preg_replace('~\s+\S+$~', '', $preview);

    // add ellipses [if desired]
    $preview .= "…";
}
// your 500-character-or-less preview 
echo $preview;

Also descending order.

Descending order when sorted how?

[Author]

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