CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phptext
David
David

Reputation: 16726

shorten a word in a block of text

I have a block of text which occasionally has a really long word/web address which breaks out of my site's layout.

What is the best way to go through this block of text and shorten the words?

EXAMPLE:

this is some text and this a long word appears like this 

fkdfjdksodifjdisosdidjsosdifosdfiosdfoisjdfoijsdfoijsdfoijsdfoijsdfoijsdfoisjdfoisdjfoisdfjosdifjosdifjosdifjosdifjosdifjsodifjosdifjosidjfosdifjsdoiofsij and i need that to either wrap in ALL browsers or trim the word.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1075

Answers (6)

Duroth
Duroth

Reputation: 6581

Based on @JonnyLitt's answer, here's my take on the problem:

<?php

function insertSoftBreak($string, $interval=20, $breakChr='&shy;') {
    $splitString = explode(' ', $string);
    foreach($splitString as $key => $val) {
        if(strlen($val)>$interval) {
            $splitString[$key] = wordwrap($val, $interval, $breakChr, true);
        }
    }
    return implode(' ', $splitString);
}

$string = 'Hello, My name is fwwfdfhhhfhhhfrhgrhffwfweronwefbwuecfbryhfbqpibcqpbfefpibcyhpihbasdcbiasdfayifvbpbfawfgawg, because that is my name.';
echo insertSoftBreak($string);

?>

Breaking the string up in space-seperated values, check the length of each individual 'word' (words include symbols like dot, comma, or question mark). For each word, check if the length is longer than $interval characters, and if so, insert a &shy; (soft hyphen) every $interval'th character.

I've chosen soft hyphens because they seem to be relatively well-supported across browsers, and they usually don't show unless the word actually wraps at that position.

I'm not aware of any other usable (and well supported) HTML entities that could be used instead (&zwnj; does not seem to work in FF 3.6, at least), so if crossbrowser support for &shy; turns out lacking, a pure CSS or Javascript-based solution would be best.

Upvotes: 0

JonnyLitt
JonnyLitt

Reputation: 773

function fixlongwords($string) {

$exploded = explode(' ', $string);
$result = '';
foreach($exploded as $curr) {
    if(strlen($curr) > 20) {
    $curr = wordwrap($curr, 20, '<br/>\n');
}
    $result .= $curr.' ';
}

return $result;

}

This should do the job.

Upvotes: 1

Simon Lieschke
Simon Lieschke

Reputation: 13324

You could use the word-wrap: break-word CSS property to wrap the text that breaks your layout.

Check out the Mozilla Developer Center examples which demonstrate its use.

Upvotes: 1

Gordon
Gordon

Reputation: 316959

You could truncate the string so it appears with an ellipsis in the middle or the end of the string. However, this would be independent from the actual rendering in a webbrowser. There is no way for PHP to determine the actual length a string will have with a certain font when rendered in a browser, especially if you have defined fallback fonts and don't know which font is used in the browser, e.g.

font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;

Compare the following:

I am 23 characters long
I am 23 characters long

Both chars have the same length, but since the one is monotyped and the other isn't the actual width it will have is different. PHP cannot determine this. You'd have to find a client side technology, probably JavaScript, to solve this for you.

You could also wrap the text into an element with the CSS property overflow:hidden to make the text disappear after a fixed length.

Look around SO. I'm pretty sure this was asked more than once before.

Upvotes: 1

nickf
nickf

Reputation: 546005

You could do something like this:

preg_replace("/(\\S{20})/", '$1&zwnj;', $text);

It should* add a zero-width non-join character into all words each 20 characters. This means they will word-wrap.

* (untested)

Upvotes: 0

Sarfraz
Sarfraz

Reputation: 382656

You need wordwrap function i suppose.

Upvotes: 1

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