Get first 100 characters from string respecting full words

Question

I have asked a similar question here before  but I need to know if this little tweak is possible   I want to shorten a string to 100 characters and use  small   substr  big  0  100   to do so   However  this just takes the first 100 characters and doesn t care whether it breaks up a word or not   Is there any way to take up to the first 100 characters of a string but make sure you don t break a word   Example    big    This is a sentence that has more than 100 characters in it  and I want to return a string of only full words that is no more than 100 characters     small   some function  big    echo  small      OUTPUT   This is a sentence that has more than 100 characters in it  and I want to return a string of only    Is there a way to do this using PHP

User · Answer

I apologize for resurrecting this question but I stumbled upon this thread and found a small issue. For anyone wanting a character limit that will remove words that would go above your given limit, the above answers work great. In my specific case, I like to display a word if the limit falls in the middle of said word. I decided to share my solution in case anyone else is looking for this functionality and needs to include words instead of trimming them out.

function str_limit($str, $len = 100, $end = '...')
{
    if(strlen($str) < $len)
    {
        return $str;
    }

    $str = preg_replace("/\s+/", ' ', str_replace(array("\r\n", "\r", "\n"), ' ', $str));

    if(strlen($str) <= $len)
    {
        return $str;
    }

    $out = '';
    foreach(explode(' ', trim($str)) as $val)
    {
        $out .= $val . ' ';

        if(strlen($out) >= $len)
        {
            $out = trim($out);
            return (strlen($out) == strlen($str)) ? $out : $out . $end;
        }
    }
}

Examples:

Input: echo str_limit('Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.', 100, '...');
Output: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore...
Input: echo str_limit('Lorem ipsum', 100, '...');
Output: Lorem ipsum
Input: echo str_limit('Lorem ipsum', 1, '...');
Output: Lorem...

User · Answer

Yes  there is   This is a function I borrowed from a user on a different forums a a few years back  so I can t take credit for it     truncate a string only at a whitespace  by nogdog  function truncate  text   length        length   abs  int  length      if strlen  text   gt   length           text   preg replace       1  length    s      s      1       text           return  text       Note that it automatically adds ellipses  if you don t want that just use    1  as the second parameter for the preg replace call

User · Answer

This function shortens a string by adding       at a word boundary whenever possible  The returned string will have a maximum length of  len including         function truncate  str   len       tail   max 0   len-10      trunk   substr  str  0   tail      trunk    strrev preg replace          s    b                strrev substr  str   tail   len- tail        return  trunk      Examples outputs    truncate  Thanks for contributing an answer to Stack Overflow    15  returns  Thanks for     truncate  To learn more  see our tips on writing great answers    15   returns  To learn more      comma also truncated  truncate  Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism   15   returns  Pseudopseudo

User · Answer

This did it for me       trim message to 100 characters  regardless of where it cuts off  msgTrimmed   mb substr  var 0 100      find the index of the last space in the trimmed message  lastSpace   strrpos  msgTrimmed       0      now trim the message at the last space so we don t cut it off in the middle of a word echo mb substr  msgTrimmed 0  lastSpace

User · Answer

Here is great solution with dotts at the end with full words  function text cut  text   length   200   dots   true         text   trim preg replace     s n r t  2            text         text temp    text      while  substr  text   length  1             length    if   length  gt  strlen  text     break           text   substr  text  0   length       return  text        dots    true  amp  amp   text        amp  amp  strlen  text temp   gt   length                       Input  Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet  consectetur adipisicing elit  sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua  Ut enim ad minim veniam  quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat  Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur  Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident  sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum   Output  Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet  consectetur adipisicing elit  sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua  Ut enim ad minim veniam  quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip

User · Answer

Yet another answer   I wasn t completely satisfied with other answers  and wanted a  hard cutoff   guaranteed word break before  max characters  if possible   so here s my function to contribute          Shortens a string  if necessary   trying for a non-word character before character limit  adds an ellipsis and    returns  Falls back to a forced cut if no non-word characters exist before         param string  content     param int     max characters - number of characters to start looking for a space   break      param bool    add ellipsis   - add ellipsis if content is shortened        return string     public static function shorten   content   max characters   100   add ellipsis   TRUE         if   strlen   content    lt    max characters             return  content                search for non-word characters      match count   preg match all     W     content   matches  PREG OFFSET CAPTURE            force a hard break if can t find another good solution      pos    max characters       if    match count  gt  0             foreach    matches 0  as  match                    check if new position fits within             if    match 1   lt    max characters                      pos    match 1                 else                   break                                      suffix      add ellipsis       amp hellip              return substr   content  0   pos      suffix

User · Answer

The problem with accepted answer is that result string goes over the the limit  i e  it can exceed 100 chars since strpos will look after the offset and so your length will always be a over your limit  If the last word is long  like squirreled then the length of your result will be 111  to give you an idea    A better solution is to use wordwrap function   function truncate  str   length   125   append                if  strlen  str   gt   length             delim      n             str   substr  str  0  strpos wordwrap  str   length   delim    delim      append              return  str      echo truncate  The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog    5     This way you can be sure the string is truncated under your limit  and never goes over   P S  This is particularly useful if you plan to store the truncated string in your database with a fixed-with column like VARCHAR 50   etc    P P S  Note the special delimiter in wordwrap  This is to make sure that your string is truncated correctly even when it contains newlines  otherwise it will truncate at first newline which you don t want

User · Answer

Another a simpler way I do   function limit words  string   word limit   10         words   explode       string       if  count  words   gt   word limit            return implode      array splice  words  0   word limit                       return implode      array splice  words  0   word limit

User · Answer

This works fine for me  I use it in my script   lt  PHP  big    This is a sentence that has more than 100 characters in it  and I want to return a string of only full words that is no more than 100 characters     small   some function  big   echo  small   function some function  string         string   substr  string 0 100         string   substr  string 0 strrpos  string             return  string      gt    good luck

User · Answer

All you need to do is use    pos strpos  content       200   substr  content 0  pos

User · Answer

function truncate   str   length        if  strlen  str   gt   length             str   substr  str  0   length 1            pos   strrpos  str                 str   substr  str  0    pos  gt  0    pos    length             return  str      Example   print truncate  The first step to eternal life is you have to die    25        string 25   The first step to eternal    print truncate  The first step to eternal life is you have to die    12        string 9   The first    print truncate  FirstStepToEternalLife   5        string 5   First

User · Answer

Here s my solution          get words until   Returns a string of delimited text parts up to a certain length    If the  words  are too long to limit  it just slices em up to the limit with an ellipsis              param  paragraph - The text you want to Parse     param  limit - The maximum character length  e g  160 chars for SMS     param string  delimiter - Use     for words and      for sentences  abbreviation bug         param null  ellipsis - Use       or    more   - Still respects character limit        return string     function get words until  paragraph   limit   delimiter         ellipsis   null         parts   explode  delimiter   paragraph         preview            if   ellipsis             limit    limit - strlen  ellipsis              foreach   parts as  part             to add    part    delimiter          if  strlen  preview   trim  to add    lt    limit       Can the part fit               preview     to add              continue                    if   strlen  preview        Is preview blank               preview   substr  part  0   limit - 3              Forced ellipsis             break                       return trim  preview     ellipsis      In your case it would be  example     big    This is a sentence that has more than 100 characters in it  and I want to return a string of only full words that is no more than 100 characters     small   get words until  big  100

User · Answer

Sure  The easiest is probably to write a wrapper around preg match   function limitString  string   limit   100           Return early if the string is already shorter than the limit     if strlen  string   lt   limit   return  string         regex        1  limit   b        preg match  regex   string   matches       return  matches 1       EDIT   Updated to not ALWAYS include a space as the last character in the string

User · Answer

Here is another way you can do that    big    This is a sentence that has more than 100 characters in it  and I want to return a string of only full words that is no more than 100 characters    big   trim   big     small    big                  if  strlen   big    gt  100                     small   mb substr   small  0  100                     last position   mb strripos   small                             if   last position  gt  0                         small   mb substr   small  0   last position                                                         echo  small     OR   echo   strlen   small    lt   strlen   big      small          small      This is also multibyte safe and also works even if there are not spaces  in which case it will just simply return first 100 characters   It takes the first 100 characters and then searches from the end till the nearest word delimiter

User · Answer

This is my approach  based on amir s answer  but it doesn t let any word make the string longer than the limit  by using strrpos   with a negative offset   Simple but works  I m using the same syntax as in Laravel s str limit   helper function  in case you want to use it on a non-Laravel project   function str limit  value   limit   100   end                 limit    limit - mb strlen  end      Take into account  end string into the limit      valuelen   mb strlen  value       return  limit  lt   valuelen   mb substr  value  0  mb strrpos  value        limit -  valuelen      end    value

User · Answer

wordwrap formats string according to limit  seprates them with  n  so we have lines smaller than 50  ords are not seprated explodes seprates string according to  n  so we have array corresponding to lines list gathers first element      list  short    explode   n  wordwrap  ali  50      please rep  Evert  since I cant comment or rep   here is sample run  php  gt    ali    ali veli krbin yz doksan esikesiksld sjkas laksjald lksjd asldkjadlkajsdlakjlksjdlkaj aslkdj alkdjs akdljsalkdj    php  gt  list  short    explode   n  wordwrap  ali  50    php  gt  var dump  short   string 42   ali veli krbin yz doksan esikesiksld sjkas  php  gt   ali      php  gt  list  short    explode   n  wordwrap  ali  50    php  gt  var dump  short   string 0

User · Answer

If you define words as  sequences of characters delimited by space     Use strrpos   to find the last space in the string  shorten to that position  trim the result

User · Answer

Get first limited character from a string          lt  php     content   row- gt title     result   substr  content  0  70     echo  result       gt

[php] Get first 100 characters from string, respecting full words

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