PHP - select first 5 rows from a textarea

Question

My textarea ( $_POST['data'] ) contains 10 strings, each separated by a new line (\n). For example:

January
February
March
April
May
Jun
July
August
September
November

In PHP, how can I select only the first 5 elements from this $_POST['data']?

I tried:

$_POST['data'] = array_slice(explode("\n", $_POST['data']), 0, 5);

but it doesn't seem to work..

Try using this pregsplit instead of explode: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3997336/explode-php-string-by-new-line — Joseph Evans, Sep 01 '16 at 18:59
So something like this: ? $_POST['data'] = array_slice(preg_split('/\n|\r/', $_POST['data'], -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY), 0, 5); I tried it but it doesn't work.. — Tomasz, Sep 01 '16 at 19:04
Probably more like: $_POST['data'] = array_slice(preg_split("/\\r\\n|\\r|\\n/", $_POST['data']), 0, 5); — Joseph Evans, Sep 01 '16 at 19:09
I tried it and it seems $_POST['data'] still has all 10 elements instead of first 5... — Tomasz, Sep 01 '16 at 19:15
The code shown in the question works for me. What browser are you using? — Don't Panic, Sep 01 '16 at 19:22
FWIW, [the spec](https://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_8.html#SEC8.2.1) says the separator shall be `\r\n`. — bishop, Sep 01 '16 at 19:36

Omari Victor Omosa · Answer 1 · 2016-09-01T19:33:13.487

0

Try

<?php     
if (isset($_POST)){
$str = $_POST['data'];

$lines=explode("\n", $str);

for($i = 0; $i < 5; ++$i) {     
     echo $lines[$i];//just get the list
     echo "$lines[$i]"."<br>";//break the lines with br
     echo "$lines[$i]"."\n";//break the lines with nr
    }
 }
?>

edited Sep 01 '16 at 19:33

answered Sep 01 '16 at 19:23

Omari Victor Omosa

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PHP - select first 5 rows from a textarea

1 Answers1