Limit length of longtext field in SELECT results

Question

I'm executing a SELECT query on a table in MySQL using the command-line interface (not a GUI client):

SELECT * FROM blog_entry;

One of blog_entry's fields is of type 'longtext' and is such a long piece of text that when the result is displayed in my terminal the display of rows takes more than one line. This causes an ugly mess of a display, where columns aren't easily visible. What technique can I use in my SELECT query that would limit the number of characters displayed for each field so that the printed row results don't overflow to new lines?

Madian

Answer 1

Use MySQL's SUBSTRING function, as described in the documentation. Like:

SELECT SUBSTRING(`text`, 1, 100) FROM blog_entry;

To select first 100 chars.

Zoltai

I found that the single inverted commas around 'text' was not required if 'text' is a field name – Burck

Are there (dis-)advantages compared to LEFT()? – Disturbing

Answer 2

You can use the LEFT() function to get only the first characters:

SELECT LEFT(LongField, 20) AS LongField_First20chars
FROM ...

Trieste

You don't really need the as LongField_First20chars unless you want to make it easier to use from a program. – Fries

@Fries of course you don't. But it's good practice to have an alias in the returned columns. – Coeliac

Quote the AS clause for pretty column names: "LongField (short view)". – Mcneely

Answer 3

The best way to clean up the readability of the results from a query in your terminal window is to use the mysql pager, not modifying your query as that can be too cumbersome.

1. Set the pager:

   mysql> pager less -S

2. Do your query:

   mysql> SELECT * FROM ...

This will put your results in a more readable format. You can use your arrow keys to page up and down and left and right to see the full table. Just press Q to get out of pager mode for that query, and then just run

mysql> pager more

to return to the normal output river if you want.

Mallina

Seems like -S would chop the whole line, not each column. – Evanevander

Rick, it does seem to chop (needed) columns in an intelilgent manner (IDK how) – Springhalt

Answer 4

Select Cast(theLongTextField As VarChar(100)) From blogEntry

Manmade