20

I am wondering if there is an elegant way to trim some text but while being HTML tag aware?

For example, I have this string:

$data = '<strong>some title text here that could get very long</strong>';

And let's say I need to return/output this string on a page but would like it to be no more than X characters. Let's say 35 for this example.

Then I use:

$output = substr($data,0,20);

But now I end up with: 

<strong>some title text here that

which as you can see the closing strong tags are discarded thus breaking the HTML display.

Is there a way around this? Also note that it is possible to have multiple tags in the string for example:

<p>some text here <strong>and here</strong></p>
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5
  • Do you need to keep any of the tags? You could use strip_tags() to take the tags out, trim the text and use it; add new <p></p> if they are needed. Commented Jan 19, 2012 at 21:29
  • 2
    I don't know if it's an option, but maybe you can use a browser-side solution like text-overflow: ellipsis or overflow: hidden. Commented Jan 19, 2012 at 21:31
  • How complex is the html going to be? Are you stuffing entire chunks of a DOM tree, or just a tag or two? Commented Jan 19, 2012 at 21:32
  • possible duplicate of Using PHP substr() and strip_tags() while retaining formatting and without breaking HTML Commented Jan 19, 2012 at 21:34
  • Yes it needs to retain HTML tags, hence the title or else I could simply use strip_tags...And no it will not be complicated...Just few tags and possibly nested tags.. Commented Jan 19, 2012 at 21:37

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
7

A few mounths ago I created a special function which is solution for your problem.

Here is a function:

function substr_close_tags($code, $limit = 300)
{
    if ( strlen($code) <= $limit )
    {
        return $code;
    }

    $html = substr($code, 0, $limit);
    preg_match_all ( "#<([a-zA-Z]+)#", $html, $result );

    foreach($result[1] AS $key => $value)
    {
        if ( strtolower($value) == 'br' )
        {
            unset($result[1][$key]);
        }
    }
    $openedtags = $result[1];

    preg_match_all ( "#</([a-zA-Z]+)>#iU", $html, $result );
    $closedtags = $result[1];

    foreach($closedtags AS $key => $value)
    {
        if ( ($k = array_search($value, $openedtags)) === FALSE )
        {
            continue;
        }
        else
        {
            unset($openedtags[$k]);
        }
    }

    if ( empty($openedtags) )
    {
        if ( strpos($code, ' ', $limit) == $limit )
        {
            return $html."...";
        }
        else
        {
            return substr($code, 0, strpos($code, ' ', $limit))."...";
        }
    }

    $position = 0;
    $close_tag = '';
    foreach($openedtags AS $key => $value)
    {   
        $p = strpos($code, ('</'.$value.'>'), $limit);

        if ( $p === FALSE )
        {
            $code .= ('</'.$value.'>');
        }
        else if ( $p > $position )
        {
            $close_tag = '</'.$value.'>';
            $position = $p;
        }
    }

    if ( $position == 0 )
    {
        return $code;
    }

    return substr($code, 0, $position).$close_tag."...";
}

Here is DEMO: http://sandbox.onlinephpfunctions.com/code/899d8137c15596a8528c871543eb005984ec0201 (click "Execute code" to check how it works).

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2 Comments

Upvoted for offering a code solution, rather than a link to a third party website (which was down at the time of commenting).
text inside <pre> returns the whole text. Test $string = <<<'EOT' <pre class="lang-php prettyprint prettyprinted"> jhfhjfghjfghjfghfghjfghjfghfgjhfgjhghjfgjfghjghjf ghjfghjfgjhfghjfghjfgjhfghjfghjfghjfgjfghjfghjfgh aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg</pre> EOT;
0

Using @newbieuser his function, I had the same issue, like @pablo-pazos, that it was (not) breaking when $limit fell into an html tag (in my case <br /> at the r)

Fixed with some code

if ( strlen($code) <= $limit ){
    return $code;
}

$html = substr($code, 0, $limit);       

//We must find a . or > or space so we are sure not being in a html-tag!
//In my case there are only <br>
//If you have more tags, or html formatted text, you must do a little more and also use something like http://htmlpurifier.org/demo.php

$_find_last_char = strrpos($html, ".")+1;
if($_find_last_char > $limit/3*2){
    $html_break = $_find_last_char;
}else{
    $_find_last_char = strrpos($html, ">")+1;
    if($_find_last_char > $limit/3*2){ 
        $html_break = $_find_last_char;
    }else{
        $html_break = strrpos($html, " ");
    }
}

$html = substr($html, 0, $html_break);
preg_match_all ( "#<([a-zA-Z]+)#", $html, $result );
......
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Comments

-3

substr(strip_tags($content), 0, 100)

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1 Comment

he want to keep the tags... not remove them.

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