string manipulation(ASP.NET MVC)

Question

i have here a code that gets a portion of a record on my database and display it and has a link ("Read More") that renders the viewer to the detailed page of that record..

    <%  Dim id As Integer = _news.Rows(count).Item("IDnews")%>
    <%=_news.Rows(count).Item("newsTitle")%>
    <img src='<%= Url.Content("~/NewsPictures/" + _news.Rows(count).Item("newsThumbnail")) %>' alt="" />
    <%Dim content As String = _news.Rows(count).Item("newsContent")%>

    <%If content.Length > 50 Then%>
    <%content = content.Substring(0, 150) & "..."%> 
    <%End If%>

    <%=content%>
    <%=Html.ActionLink("Read More", "NewsPublic", "Administration", New With {id}, DBNull.Value)%>

it displays something like : We assure you that the U... Read More

i would like that the last word be completed before it is cut. or maybe 3 sentences should be displayed before it is cut.. the last word in the above sample should be 'University'...

thank you! God bless!

Answer 1

content.Substring(0, content.IndexOf(" ", 150))

Answer 2

you could do something which finds the first space after the 150th character, or if it cant find a space extends to the end. e.g.

<%content = content.Substring(0, (content.IndexOf(" ", 150) < 0 ? content.Length : content.IndexOf(" ", 150))) & "..."%>

If you know there is a space after the 150 character then:

<%content = content.Substring(0, content.IndexOf(" ", 150)) & "..."%>

would be sufficient

Answer 3

Replace the line

<%content = content.Substring(0, 150) & "..."%>

with

<%content = GetStartOfString(content, 150) %>

Then create a function similar to this in a utilities class or wherever you keep code that you reuse.

public static string GetStartOfString(string s, int length)
{
        if (s.Length <= length)
        {
            return s;
        }

        if(s.IndexOf(" ",length) > 0)
            return s.Substring(0, s.IndexOf(" ",length));   

        return s.substring(0,length);
 }

This way you have all the code in one place rather than spread across multiple places. (DRY) Also you could globalize the length in this method and have it work site wide with just a small change.

Answer 4

An alternative solution would be to have 2 fields in your database. One for the main Content and one for a Headline. The Headline provides a summary of the main Content and be limited to 150 characters. This would avoid any spaghetti code in your View and your content would be better described.