CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpmysqlselect
Emi
Emi

Reputation: 1215

Selection from MySQL - only the initial from the Last Name

I have a question when doing the selection from a database:

A column from one of my tables contains the name from persons. Let's say it looks like this:

 1. John Smith
 2. William Thorne
 3. Mark Johanson

Ok, I have shown you some examples of some random names.

The thing is that both, the first name, and the last name are in the same column, and the result I want to come to, when I'm doing the selection in my php file is this:

1. John S.
2. William T.
3. Mark J.

I want that from the last name of each person, to be shown only the initial of the last name. Is there a possibility to do this? If there is, any help would be great.

My code selection example is here:

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM feedback_rate 
                       WHERE accept=1 
                       ORDER BY date DESC 
                       LIMIT $start,$rows_per_page",$con);

Thank you for the help in advance.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 365

Answers (3)

LittleRed
LittleRed

Reputation: 1

I find this is the easiest way of dealing with this. It simply creates an initial on the last word of the string. This allows for double barrel surnames like 'van Dyke', which becomes 'van D'. Note that hyphenated names will still be reduced to the first character, but it's unlikely that this would be an issue. If there is only one word in the string, it will not be initialized. Three simple lines of code:

$nameparts = explode(' ',$fullname);
if(count($nameparts) > 1) $nameparts[count($nameparts)-1] = substr($nameparts[count($nameparts)-1],0,1);
$fullname = implode(' ',$nameparts);

Upvotes: 0

George G
George G

Reputation: 7695

It's better to manipulate data in PHP (leaving original data untouched, it's always good practice):

$name = "John Sephre";
$expl = explode(' ', $name);

echo $expl [0].' '.$expl[1][0];

Output:

John S

If you gonna have long names:

$name = "John Sephre More";
$expl = explode(' ', $name);

$last = end($expl);

echo $expl[0].' '.$last[0];

Output:

John M

Also I would recommend to create function for this purpose:

function makeShortName($fullName)
{
    $expl = explode(' ', $fullName);

    $shortened = $expl[0];

    if(count($expl) > 1)
    {
        $last = end($expl);
        $shortened .= ' '.$last[0].'.';
    }

    return $shortened;
}

So if you pass just John it will return John and if you pass John nickname Surname result will be John S.

Upvotes: 1

KIKO Software
KIKO Software

Reputation: 16688

You have to realise that this is extremely difficult to do right. Computers don't know about names, they have no idea what's a first name and what's a last name. You therefore will have to make assumptions which aren't always true. I make the assumption that there's always only one first name. Then it is easy to solve in PHP with the following steps:

  1. Split name into words.
  2. Change the last word.
  3. put them back together again.

This is how that is done:

$parts = explode(' ',$fullName);
$firstName = array_pop($parts);
$initial = substr($firstName,0,1);
array_push($parts,$initial.'.');
$fullName = implode(' ',$parts);

And now $fullName will contain what you wanted. The code look a bit long but that's because I try to show it step by step.

Upvotes: 4

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