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Parameter $board

Expected type: Integer
Description: The ID of the board to pull the info from. If not specified, the first board that guests can see will be used.

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Parameter $limit

Expected type: Integer
Description: The maximum number of items to find. If not specified, function will find all available items.

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Parameter $start

Expected type: Integer
Description: The ID of a particular post to start with (otherwise the first result will be used)

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Parameter $length

Expected type: Integer
Description: If specified, posts longer than this will be shortened and have "..." or a "Read More" link appended

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Parameter $output_method

Expected type: String
Description: Standard SSI.php output_method variable. If 'echo', the results will be displayed in a pre-formatted style. Otherwise they will be returned in an array of arrays. Default is 'echo'.

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Return value

Expected type: Array
Description: If output_method is 'echo', the function will display the information in a preformatted style. Otherwise an array of arrays will be returned. Each array is a separate news item and contains the following info

Array Elements
Key	Optional	Expected type	Description
body	no	String	The post (with bbcode and smileys already parsed). If length is specified, body is limited to the specified length and "..." is appended after the last space or linebreak
href	no	String	URL to the topic
icon	no	String	HTML string to display the message icon
id	no	Integer	Topic ID
is_last	no	Boolean	Whether or not this is the last item in the array (used to determine when to stop displaying seperators)
link	no	String	A link to the topic displayed as how many "comments" (replies) it has (see ssi_examples.php)
new_comment	no	String	A link to reply to the last post in the topic, displayed as "Write Comment" (see ssi_examples.php)
poster	no	Array	The standard array of poster information - id (member ID or 0 for guests), name (display name or the name the guest entered), href (URL to poster's profile or an empty string for guests), link (link to the poster's profile or just the name if they were a guest)
replies	no	Integer	How many replies the topic has
subject	no	String	Topic's subject
time	no	String	Formatted time/date string corresponding to when the topic was started
timestamp	no	Integer	UNIX timestamp corresponding to when the topic was started (can be used to customize date/time info)