Question

How can I get the first n characters of a string in PHP? What’s the fastest way to trim a string to a specific number of characters, and append ‘…’ if needed?

Answer 1

//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 ‘…’

Update 2:

Or as function:

function truncate($string, $length, $dots = "...") {
    return (strlen($string) > $length) ? substr($string, 0, $length - strlen($dots)) . $dots : $string;
}

Update 3:

It’s been a while since I wrote this answer and I don’t actually use this code any more. I prefer this function which prevents breaking the string in the middle of a word using the wordwrap function:

function truncate($string,$length=100,$append="…") {
  $string = trim($string);

  if(strlen($string) > $length) {
    $string = wordwrap($string, $length);
    $string = explode("\n", $string, 2);
    $string = $string[0] . $append;
  }

  return $string;
}