PHP - Cut down string and close html tags

Question

So in a webpage i'm working on a user inputs a description that is html formatted and its added to the database which is working, the problem arises when I pull in the description and shorten it to 150 characters and add the "..." its messing up my html because sometimes tags go unclosed. Any suggestion would be wonderful

Answer 1

Here is a great answer to a similar question. You'll have to count tags and add whichever ones are truncated.

pseudo code

userData = getUserInput();
stack = array();
loop (line in userData) {
   matches = search for "<*>"; // may have multiple on one line
   loop (match in matches) {
      tagName = getTagNameFrom(match);
      if ("/" is not found) {
         push tagName on stack;
      } else if ("/" is found) {
         pop tagName off stack; 
         // There was an error if the stack is
         // empty or the tagName that was popped was not
         // the same.
      }
   }
}
foreach tagName in stack {
   userdata += "</" + tagName + ">";
}

By the way, your webpage sounds really vulnerable to XSS.

Answer 2

1. You can use some combination of strip_tags and splitting on different tags to get just pieces of things to shorten to 150 characters.

2. You can use css styling called ellipsis. An example:

:

.ellipsisClass {
  width: 250px; // you MUST set a width
  white-space: nowrap;  // you MUST set nowrap
  overflow: hidden;  // you MUST set overflow to hidden
  text-overflow: ellipsis; // and then you can use text-overflow: ellipsis
}

Answer 3

you could refer the solution at the link: https://github.com/dhngoc/php-cut-html-string. If you want to add "..." at end of string after cutting. You have to adjust the function cutHtmlString, see these line codes:

$opened_tags = array_reverse($opened_tags);
foreach ($opened_tags as $key => $item) {
   $act_str = $act_str . '</'.$item.'>';    
}

Change to

$opened_tags = array_reverse($opened_tags);
foreach ($opened_tags as $key => $item) {
    if ($key == 0) {
     $act_str = $act_str . '...</'.$item.'>';      
   } else {
     $act_str = $act_str . '</'.$item.'>';    
   }       

}