Using PHP substr() and strip_tags() while retaining formatting and without breaking HTML

Question

I have various HTML strings to cut to 100 characters (of the stripped content, not the original) without stripping tags and without breaking HTML.

Original H

Answer 1

Here is my try at the cutter. Maybe you guys can catch some bugs. The problem, i found with the other parsers, is that they don't close tags properly and they cut in the middle of a word (blah)

function cutHTML($string, $length, $patternsReplace = false) {
    $i = 0;
    $count = 0;
    $isParagraphCut = false;
    $htmlOpen = false;
    $openTag = false;
    $tagsStack = array();

    while ($i < strlen($string)) {
        $char = substr($string, $i, 1);
        if ($count >= $length) {
            $isParagraphCut = true;
            break;
        }

        if ($htmlOpen) {
            if ($char === ">") {
                $htmlOpen = false;
            }
        } else {
            if ($char === "<") {
                $j = $i;
                $char = substr($string, $j, 1);

                while ($j < strlen($string)) {
                    if($char === '/'){
                        $i++;
                        break;
                    }
                    elseif ($char === ' ') {
                        $tagsStack[] = substr($string, $i, $j);
                    }
                    $j++;
                }
                $htmlOpen = true;
            }
        }

        if (!$htmlOpen && $char != ">") {
            $count++;
        }

        $i++;
    }

    if ($isParagraphCut) {
        $j = $i;
        while ($j > 0) {
            $char = substr($string, $j, 1);
            if ($char === " " || $char === ";" || $char === "." || $char === "," || $char === "<" || $char === "(" || $char === "[") {
                break;
            } else if ($char === ">") {
                $j++;
                break;
            }
            $j--;
        }
        $string = substr($string, 0, $j);
        foreach($tagsStack as $tag){
            $tag = strtolower($tag);
            if($tag !== "img" && $tag !== "br"){
                $string .= "";
            }
        }
        $string .= "...";
    }

    if ($patternsReplace) {
        foreach ($patternsReplace as $value) {
            if (isset($value['pattern']) && isset($value["replace"])) {
                $string = preg_replace($value["pattern"], $value["replace"], $string);
            }
        }
    }
    return $string;
}