How to get a trimmed article synopsis with PHP?

Question

How do I specify that a post only show a certain amount of words in PHP, and then it shows a continuation link that will take my users to the full article? An example would be on wired.com. At the bottom, there is a tabbed section where the tabs say 'latest blog post,' 'most popular articles,' etc. Each post there only shows a specific amount of words and then there is an ellipses that indicates that the user may continue the article.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, Yahoo! will munge the formatting of this answer, but here it goes:

<?php

$limit = 50;

$string = "How do I specify that a post only show a certain amount of words in PHP, and then it shows a continuation link that will take my users to the full article? An example would be on wired.com. At the bottom, there is a tabbed section where the tabs say 'latest blog post,' 'most popular articles,' etc. Each post there only shows a specific amount of words and then there is an ellipses that indicates that the user may continue the article.";

$string = wordLimit($string, $limit);

printf('<p>%s</p>', $string);

function wordLimit($inputStr, $wordLimit) {

    

    // if the input isn't longer than the limit,

    // we have no work

    if (str_word_count($inputStr) <= $wordLimit)

        return $inputStr;

    

    $truncated = '';

    $token = strtok($inputStr, ' ');

    for ($i = 0; $token !== false && $i < $wordLimit; $token = strtok(' '), $i++) {

        if (strlen($token) > 0)

            $truncated .= $token . ' ';

    }    

    return rtrim($truncated) . '...';

}

?>

Answer 2

Look into substr(), where you can tell it to return say the first 100 characters.  Then concatinate a "..." to the end, build the link, and you're done.

Answer 3

Check this link

http://www.webdevboost.co.uk/Programming...

The following function makes it really simple to create

<?php

function shorten($var_name,$var_length)

{

if(strlen($var_name) > $var_length)

{

return substr($var_name,0,$var_length-3)."...";

}

else

{

return $var_name;

}

}

echo shorten ("This word will be shortened and a treble dot will be added",40);

?>