Problem with Substring() - ArgumentOutOfRangeException

Question

I have a repeater that displays data from my Projects table. There are projectId, name and description. I use Substring(1, 240) on description. But sometimes the string is s

Answer 1

Let's try to keep this simple...

We only need to truncate to a given max length, so how about we call it what it is:

description.TruncateTo(240);

The extension method that enables the above (ellipsis is appended by default if truncated):

public static class StringExtensions
{
    public static string TruncateTo(this string val, int maxLength, bool ellipsis = true)
    {
        if (val == null || val.Length <= maxLength)
        {
            return val;
        }

        ellipsis = ellipsis && maxLength >= 3;
        return ellipsis ? val.Substring(0, maxLength - 3) + "..." : val.Substring(0, maxLength);
    }
}