How to Truncate a string in PHP to the word closest to a certain number of characters?

Question

I have a code snippet written in PHP that pulls a block of text from a database and sends it out to a widget on a webpage. The original block of text can be a lengthy artic

Answer 1

While this is a rather old question, I figured I would provide an alternative, as it was not mentioned and valid for PHP 4.3+.

You can use the sprintf family of functions to truncate text, by using the %.ℕs precision modifier.

A period . followed by an integer who's meaning depends on the specifier:

• For e, E, f and F specifiers: this is the number of digits to be printed after the decimal point (by default, this is 6).
• For g and G specifiers: this is the maximum number of significant digits to be printed.
• For s specifier: it acts as a cutoff point, setting a maximum character limit to the string

Simple Truncation https://3v4l.org/QJDJU

$string = '0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ';
var_dump(sprintf('%.10s', $string));

Result

string(10) "0123456789"

---

Expanded Truncation https://3v4l.org/FCD21

Since sprintf functions similarly to substr and will partially cut off words. The below approach will ensure words are not cutoff by using strpos(wordwrap(..., '[break]'), '[break]') with a special delimiter. This allows us to retrieve the position and ensure we do not match on standard sentence structures.

Returning a string without partially cutting off words and that does not exceed the specified width, while preserving line-breaks if desired.

function truncate($string, $width, $on = '[break]') {
    if (strlen($string) > $width && false !== ($p = strpos(wordwrap($string, $width, $on), $on))) {
        $string = sprintf('%.'. $p . 's', $string);
    }
    return $string;
}
var_dump(truncate('0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ', 20));

var_dump(truncate("Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry.", 20));

var_dump(truncate("Lorem Ipsum\nis simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry.", 20));

Result

/* 
string(36) "0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"  
string(14) "Lorem Ipsum is" 
string(14) "Lorem Ipsum
is" 
*/

Results using wordwrap($string, $width) or strtok(wordwrap($string, $width), "\n")

/*
string(14) "Lorem Ipsum is"
string(11) "Lorem Ipsum"
*/