I've included 3 possible solutions below - adding manual line breaks as you asked about in your question; a basic but unsatisfactory CSS option and a jQuery solution which in this case is the one I would suggest as the most flexible.
Although a CSS-only solution is usually the preferred way of fixing a layout issue, when it comes to equal heights of elements there isn't a clear-cut way to do it and often a jQuery solution like the one below is required.
- Manual line-break - as requested in your question
Instead of doing an additional SQL query as mentioned, you can easily do it in the PHP in 2 different ways:
(a) loop through the rows before displaying them to calculate the title lengths, then loop again to display with/without the line break
or
(b) if you really down't want to loop twice, you could include the line break regardless of length as you loop once, but also calculate the line length in that loop. Then hide the line break using CSS if its not required
(a) 2 loops: Calculate length to determine whether to add the line break or not:
<?php
$maxchars = 41;
$cards = array();
$bLongTitle = false;
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($rs_result)) {
// save detaisl to $cards array
$cards[$row["title"]] = $row["category"];
// check title lengths until we find one over 41 - no need to check any more after that
if (!$bLongTitle && strlen($row["title"])) > $maxchars)
$bLongTitle = true;
}
?>
<div class="row">
<?php
foreach ($cards as $title => $category) {
?>
<div class="col xl4 l4 m12 s12">
<div class="card z-depth-5">
<div class="card-content">
<p><?
// if there were any long title, wrap them all text
if ($bLongTitle)
$title = wordwrap($title, $maxchars, "<br />\n");
echo $title;
?></p>
<p>Category: <? echo $category; ?></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<?php
}
?>
</div>
(b) 1 loop: Always display line break, and hide it if not required
<div class="row">
<?php
$bLongTitle = false;
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($rs_result)) {
?>
<div class="col xl4 l4 m12 s12">
<div class="card z-depth-5">
<div class="card-content">
<p class="cardTitle"><? echo wordwrap($title, $maxchars, "<br />\n"); ?></p>
<p>Category: <? echo $row["category"]; ?></p>
<?php
// check title lengths until we find one over 41 - no need to check any more after that
if (!$bLongTitle && strlen($row["title"])) > $maxchars)
$bLongTitle = true;
?>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<?php
};
?>
</div>
<?php if ($bLongTitle) {?>
<script>.cardTitle br {display:none;}</script>
<?php } ?>
- CSS-only solution - not viable for the OP?
Because the titles are aren't direct siblings, the only way would be to fix the height of all title. This isn't a desirable solution, as I'm sure titles can vary a lot in length so its impossible to pick a "default" height to suit every possibility, and even that's complicated by the responsive width of the columns potentially changing the heights dynamically.
But for the sake of completeness:
- add a class (e.g. .cardTitle) to the title in your loop
- identify suitable heights for the title with and without a line break, and set these in your CSS
- add the corresponding class (e.g.
wrapTitle) to your <p> if any title is too long in a loop (similar to adding a line break above)
CSS
p.cardTitle { height:20px; } /* example of the default height for title */
p.cardTitle.wraptitle { height:40px; } /* example of height for wrapped title */
PHP (after looping through SQL rows to fill $cards array as option (a) above)
<?php
foreach ($cards as $title => $category) {
?>
<div class="col xl4 l4 m12 s12">
<div class="card z-depth-5">
<div class="card-content">
<p class="cardTitle <?php if ($bLongTitle) echo "wrapTitle"; ?>"><? echo $title; ?></p>
<p>Category: <? echo $row["category"]; ?></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<?php
};
?>
- jQuery
You could use jQuery to loop through all elements to calculate the heights, and set them all to the tallest.
You could write the code yourself (see How to make all div columns of the same height automatically with jQuery or Setting equal heights for div's with jQuery but there is a library available to do this for you: matchHeight
Using the library, all you need to do is include it on your page and call it like this (assuming you've added the class cardTitle to the <p> that holds your title)
jQuery(document).ready(function() {
$(".cardTitle").matchHeight();
});
