What's the fastest way to trim a string to a specific number of characters, and append '...' if needed?
+7
A:
//The simple version for 10 Characters from the beginning of the string
$string = substr($string,0,10).'...';
Update:
Based on suggestion for checking length (and also ensuring similar lengths on trimmed and untrimmed strings):
$string = (strlen($string) > 13) ? substr($string,0,10).'...' : $string;
So you will get a string of max 13 characters; either 13 (or less) normal characters or 10 characters followed by '...'
Brendan Bullen
2010-07-01 21:30:17
However, you'd need to check if you actually docked the string, as you wouldn't want to add '...' to $string="Hello"; since it is less than 10 characters.
MarkD
2010-07-01 21:31:36
good point! A simple ternary conditional should do it
Brendan Bullen
2010-07-01 21:33:57
This is what the OP asked for, and what every implementation looks like, but I'd recommend checking `strlen($string) > 13)` instead; there's no reason to truncate the last three characters of the string if you're going to replace it with '...'
Michael Mrozek
2010-07-01 21:46:32
A:
It's best to abstract you're code like so (notice the limit is optional and defaults to 10):
print Limit($string);
function Limit($var, $limit=10)
{
if ( strlen($var) > $limit )
{
return substr($string, 0, $limit) . '...';
}
else
{
return $var;
}
}
TravisO
2010-07-01 21:35:12
That won't work because [trim()](http://de3.php.net/manual/en/function.trim.php) already exists.
Gordon
2010-07-01 21:41:32
Could explain why this approach is best instead of just asserting that it is?
Robert
2010-07-01 21:55:46
@Robert it's simple, and abstracting means you don't have to retype the code over and over. And most importantly, if you do find a better way to do this, or want something more complex, you only change this 1 function instead of 50 pieces of code.
TravisO
2010-07-06 01:39:23
+1
A:
The Multibyte extension can come in handy if you need control over the string charset.
$charset = 'UTF-8';
$length = 10;
$string = 'Hai to yoo! I like yoo soo!';
if(mb_strlen($string, $charset) > $length) {
$string = mb_substr($string, 0, $length, $charset) . '...';
}
Emil Vikström
2010-07-01 21:35:34
A:
substr() would be best, you'll also want to check the length of the string first
$str = 'someLongString';
$max = 7;
if(strlen($str) > $max) {
$str = substr($str, 0, $max) . '...';
}
wordwrap won't trim the string down, just split it up...
tsgrasser
2010-07-01 21:42:37
A:
The codeigniter framework contains a helper for this, called the "text helper". Here's some documentation from codeigniter's user guide that applies: http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/helpers/text_helper.html (just read the word_limiter and character_limiter sections). Here's two functions from it relevant to your question:
if ( ! function_exists('word_limiter'))
{
function word_limiter($str, $limit = 100, $end_char = '…')
{
if (trim($str) == '')
{
return $str;
}
preg_match('/^\s*+(?:\S++\s*+){1,'.(int) $limit.'}/', $str, $matches);
if (strlen($str) == strlen($matches[0]))
{
$end_char = '';
}
return rtrim($matches[0]).$end_char;
}
}
And
if ( ! function_exists('character_limiter'))
{
function character_limiter($str, $n = 500, $end_char = '…')
{
if (strlen($str) < $n)
{
return $str;
}
$str = preg_replace("/\s+/", ' ', str_replace(array("\r\n", "\r", "\n"), ' ', $str));
if (strlen($str) <= $n)
{
return $str;
}
$out = "";
foreach (explode(' ', trim($str)) as $val)
{
$out .= $val.' ';
if (strlen($out) >= $n)
{
$out = trim($out);
return (strlen($out) == strlen($str)) ? $out : $out.$end_char;
}
}
}
}
Matthew
2010-07-06 01:43:53