Truncate a string to first n characters of a string and add three dots if any characters are removed

Solution 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="&hellip;") {
  $string = trim($string);

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

  return $string;
}

Solution 2:

This functionality has been built into PHP since version 4.0.6. See the docs.

echo mb_strimwidth('Hello World', 0, 10, '...');

// outputs Hello W...

Note that the trimmarker (the ellipsis above) are included in the truncated length.

Solution 3:

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 - 3, $charset) . '...';
}

Solution 4:

sometimes, you need to limit the string to the last complete word ie: you don't want the last word to be broken instead you stop with the second last word.

eg: we need to limit "This is my String" to 6 chars but instead of 'This i..." we want it to be 'This..." ie we will skip that broken letters in the last word.

phew, am bad at explaining, here is the code.

class Fun {

    public function limit_text($text, $len) {
        if (strlen($text) < $len) {
            return $text;
        }
        $text_words = explode(' ', $text);
        $out = null;


        foreach ($text_words as $word) {
            if ((strlen($word) > $len) && $out == null) {

                return substr($word, 0, $len) . "...";
            }
            if ((strlen($out) + strlen($word)) > $len) {
                return $out . "...";
            }
            $out.=" " . $word;
        }
        return $out;
    }

}

Solution 5:

If you want to cut being careful to don't split words you can do the following

function ellipse($str,$n_chars,$crop_str=' [...]')
{
    $buff=strip_tags($str);
    if(strlen($buff) > $n_chars)
    {
        $cut_index=strpos($buff,' ',$n_chars);
        $buff=substr($buff,0,($cut_index===false? $n_chars: $cut_index+1)).$crop_str;
    }
    return $buff;
}

if $str is shorter than $n_chars returns it untouched.

If $str is equal to $n_chars returns it as is as well.

if $str is longer than $n_chars then it looks for the next space to cut or (if no more spaces till the end) $str gets cut rudely instead at $n_chars.

NOTE: be aware that this method will remove all tags in case of HTML.