Question

I’ve got a string like this:

I love @kevinrose 's new website <a href="http://kevinrose.com">Link</a>

And I have this function:

function short($string, $max = 255) {
    if (strlen($string) >= $max) {
        $string = mb_substr($string, 0, $max - 5, 'utf-8') . '...';
    } return $string;
}

If I cut the screen at 50, it will end up being something that :

I love @kevinrose 's new website <a href="http://kevinr...

Which will of course kill the html.

Is there an easy way I can avoid cutting the a href tag (before or preferably after) without breaking the HTML ?

I need to keep my tags of course.

Thank you

Answer 1

see this from PHP: Truncate string while preserving HTML tags and whole words – Alan Whipple -> http://alanwhipple.com/2011/05/25/php-truncate-string-preserving-html-tags-words/

<?php
/**
 * truncateHtml can truncate a string up to a number of characters while preserving whole words and HTML tags
 *
 * @param string $text String to truncate.
 * @param integer $length Length of returned string, including ellipsis.
 * @param string $ending Ending to be appended to the trimmed string.
 * @param boolean $exact If false, $text will not be cut mid-word
 * @param boolean $considerHtml If true, HTML tags would be handled correctly
 *
 * @return string Trimmed string.
 */
function truncateHtml($text, $length = 100, $ending = '...', $exact = false, $considerHtml = true) {
    if ($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
                if (preg_match('/^<(\s*.+?\/\s*|\s*(img|br|input|hr|area|base|basefont|col|frame|isindex|link|meta|param)(\s.+?)?)>$/is', $line_matchings[1])) {
                    // do nothing
                // if tag is a closing tag
                } else if (preg_match('/^<\s*\/([^\s]+?)\s*>$/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
                } 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};|[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};|[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;
}

?>

also see here

• Truncating Text & HTML with PHP | Patrick Galbraith ->
  http://www.pjgalbraith.com/2011/11/truncating-text-html-with-php/