how do I limit the characters in selected row and con-cat with '...'
You can use MySQL's IF function

select
    IF(LENGTH(comment) &gt; 50,CONCAT(LEFT(comment,50),'...'),comment) comment
from mip where active = 1;


or

select
    IF(LENGTH(comment) &gt; 50,CONCAT(SUBSTR(comment,1,50),'...'),comment) comment
from mip where active = 1;