Shorten a string?

[alexjewell]

Hey, there's a string I'm taking from a database and displaying. I would like to shorten that string if it is longer than a certain number of characters and add "..." at the end. How would I do this? Thanks.

[thetestingsite]

Check out the following thread:
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/forums/s...ghlight=substr

Hope this helps.

[Twey]

Better would be a soft limit in words, then a hard limit in characters:

function truncate_passage($tr, $wordlimit = 20, $charlimit = 0, $tail = '...') {
  $utail = false;

  if($wordlimit) {
    $tr = explode(' ', $tr);
    $utail = count($tr) > $wordlimit;
    $tr = implode(' ', array_slice($tr, 0, $wordlimit));
  }

  if($charlimit) {
    $utail = $utail || strlen($tr) > $charlimit;
    $tr = substr($tr, 0, $charlimit);
  }

  if($utail) $tr .= $tail;

  return $tr;
}

[alexjewell]

I think I may have a use for both. Thanks guys

[boogyman]

only question I have is what is "utail" ?

Edit: BEGIN

I think I may have a use for both. Thanks guys

that script allows both. truncate_passage($tr, $wordlimit = 20, $charlimit = 0, $tail = '...')

Edit: END

[Twey]

alexjewell, there's nothing that does that mine doesn't.

boogyman, whether to append the tail or not. I called it $tail, then made it into a function, and $tail was the logical name for the fourth parameter, so I had to rename it.

[alexjewell]

I used substr and strlen:

if(strlen($row['Title'])){ $row['Title'] = substr($row['Title'],0,25).'...';}

[boogyman]

I used substr and strlen:

if(strlen($row['Title'])){ $row['Title'] = substr($row['Title'],0,25).'...';}

that will be fine if this is the one and only time you will EVER need to do this, including not only in this script but forever, which the liklihood of you encountering something else you would like to limit is very very slim.

Twey was giving you a generic fuction that you could re-use over and over and over. and cover a number of parameters and options.

but we aren't here to dictate how you write your site, so I'm happy you found the solution. a good reference is www.php.net which is the homesite of the programming language, and it is very well documented.


Twey, I thought it was just a check to see whether or not to include the tail but what shook me was

$utail = count($tr) > $wordlimit;

$utail = $utail || strlen($tr) > $charlimit;

That first one is the one that threw me off because its setting the tail by default where the second is creating a check first?

[Twey]

I used substr and strlen:

The main problem with this is that it's liable to cut off the string halfway through a word: "I welcome you all here tod" while mine will try not to do so where possible: "I welcome you all here today..." That was the main problem I was trying to solve. The hard character limit is off by default but should probably be set too, since otherwise one very long word wouldn't get truncated.

That first one is the one that threw me off because its setting the tail by default where the second is creating a check first?

What? The former is equivalent to:

if(count($tr) > $wordlimit) // if there are more words than allowed
  $utail = true;

And the latter:

if($utail || strlen($tr) > $charlimit)
  $utail = true;

Without the check for $utail, the function wouldn't append the dots if the string were truncated by words and then was shorter than the character limit.

[djr33]

Another thought--

function cut_it($str,$len=20) { //default is 20, but you can switch to anything you want here on when calling it
if (strlen($str)<=$len) { return $str; }
$str = wordwrap($str,$len); //defaults to the behaviour twey setup
$str = explode("\n",$str,2); //lazy-- you could use substr/strpos, etc
return $str[0];
}
$test = 'whatever and stuff this is some text etc';
$test = cut_it($test,15);