Question

I have a form that allow user input product description, and in the list page I want to print out product description in brief (just few lines).

But the description contains html tags, I’ve tried some solutions, but they can’t solve my problem.

(e.g:If I shorten the text by using sub string function, but it will have problem with unclosed tag)

Answer 1

You could do a quick tag stripping, and add an ellipsis at the end for added decoration:

function shorten($text, $length)
{
   $text = trim( strip_tags($text) );

   $textLen = strlen($text);

   if($textLen < $length)
   { 
     return $text;
   }
   else
   {
     $text = substr($text, 0, $length);
     $text .= '&hellip;';
     return $text;
   }
}

Beware that strip_tags() is not foolproof and can mess up the text if you have malformed html tags, but it’s a “quick&dirty” solution; otherwise you’ll need to parse the html with a proper tool (DOMDocument for example, or better parsers) and then do your substr()