Add ellipsis to end of truncated string in WordPress plugin

Question

I'm trying to add an ellipsis to the end of the truncated strings this php function produces. It's part of a Wordpress plugin. But alas, I'm just learning php....

I've tried printing the ellipsis right before the ending html tag near the end of the function, like this

$truncate .= '... </' . $tag . '>';

but no luck. Any ideas? It must be fairly straightforward.

Here's the whole function:

if( !function_exists( 'yd_cake_truncate' ) ) {
    function yd_cake_truncate($text, $length = 100, $ending = '...', $exact = true, $considerHtml = false) {
        if ($considerHtml) {
            // if the plain text is shorter than the maximum length, return the whole text
            if (strlen(preg_replace('/<.*?>/', '', $text)) <= $length) {
                return $text;
            }

            // splits all html-tags to scanable lines
            preg_match_all('/(<.+?>)?([^<>]*)/s', $text, $lines, PREG_SET_ORDER);

            $total_length = strlen($ending);
            $open_tags = array();
            $truncate = '';

            foreach ($lines as $line_matchings) {
                // if there is any html-tag in this line, handle it and add it (uncounted) to the output
                if (!empty($line_matchings[1])) {
                    // if it's an "empty element" with or without xhtml-conform closing slash (f.e. <br/>)
                    if (preg_match('/^<(\s*.+?\/\s*|\s*(img|br|input|hr|area|base|basefont|col|frame|isindex|link|meta|param)(\s.+?)?)>$/is', $line_matchings[1])) {
                        // do nothing
                        // if tag is a closing tag (f.e. </b>)
                    } else if (preg_match('/^<\s*\/([^\s]+?)\s*>$/s', $line_matchings[1], $tag_matchings)) {
                        // delete tag from $open_tags list
                        $pos = array_search($tag_matchings[1], $open_tags);
                        if ($pos !== false) {
                            unset($open_tags[$pos]);
                        }
                        // if tag is an opening tag (f.e. <b>)
                    } else if (preg_match('/^<\s*([^\s>!]+).*?>$/s', $line_matchings[1], $tag_matchings)) {
                        // add tag to the beginning of $open_tags list
                        array_unshift($open_tags, strtolower($tag_matchings[1]));
                    }
                    // add html-tag to $truncate'd text
                    $truncate .= $line_matchings[1];
                }

                // calculate the length of the plain text part of the line; handle entities as one character
                $content_length = strlen(preg_replace('/&[0-9a-z]{2,8};|&#[0-9]{1,7};|&#x[0-9a-f]{1,6};/i', ' ', $line_matchings[2]));
                if ($total_length+$content_length> $length) {
                    // the number of characters which are left
                    $left = $length - $total_length;
                    $entities_length = 0;
                    // search for html entities
                    if (preg_match_all('/&[0-9a-z]{2,8};|&#[0-9]{1,7};|&#x[0-9a-f]{1,6};/i', $line_matchings[2], $entities, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE)) {
                        // calculate the real length of all entities in the legal range
                        foreach ($entities[0] as $entity) {
                            if ($entity[1]+1-$entities_length <= $left) {
                                $left--;
                                $entities_length += strlen($entity[0]);
                            } else {
                                // no more characters left
                                break;
                            }
                        }
                    }
                    $truncate .= substr($line_matchings[2], 0, $left+$entities_length);
                    // maximum lenght is reached, so get off the loop
                    break;
                } else {
                    $truncate .= $line_matchings[2];
                    $total_length += $content_length;
                }

                // if the maximum length is reached, get off the loop
                if($total_length>= $length) {
                    break;
                }
            }
        } else {
            if (strlen($text) <= $length) {
                return $text;
            } else {
                $truncate = substr($text, 0, $length - strlen($ending));
            }
        }

        // if the words shouldn't be cut in the middle...
        if (!$exact) {
            // ...search the last occurance of a space...
            $spacepos = strrpos($truncate, ' ');
            if (isset($spacepos)) {
                // ...and cut the text in this position
                $truncate = substr($truncate, 0, $spacepos);
            }
        }

        // add the defined ending to the text
        $truncate .= $ending;

        if($considerHtml) {
            // close all unclosed html-tags
            foreach ($open_tags as $tag) {
                    $truncate .= '</' . $tag . '>';
            }
        }

        return $truncate;

    } 
}

Answer 1

The function signature looks like it adds ellipses to the end of the truncated string by default using the $ending argument:

yd_cake_truncate($text, $length = 100, $ending = '...', $exact = true, $considerHtml = false)

Looking down further, $ending is appended to the truncated string near the end of the function:

    // add the defined ending to the text
    $truncate .= $ending;

How are you calling this function when you're trying to use it?