Actually user code is correct and working also correct. But unfortunately is not returning any character with 150 character. Try 5000 .
$trim_string = substr($string, 0, 5000);
To understand this problem see view source.
You can use this code instead of your and definitely it will work:
$url = 'http://crewow.com/CSS_Layout_Tutorial.php';
$data = file_get_contents($url);
$content = plaintext($data);
//echo trim($content);
$Preview = trim_display(150,trim($content)); //to Show first 100 char of the web page as preview
echo $Preview;
function trim_display($size,$string)
{
//echo "string is : $string <br/>";
$trim_string = substr($string, 0, 150);
$trim_string = $trim_string . "...";
//echo "Trim string is $trim_string <br/>";
return $trim_string;
}
function plaintext($html)
{
$plaintext = preg_replace('#([<]title)(.*)([<]/title[>])#s', ' ', $html);
// remove title
//$plaintext = preg_match('#<title>(.*?)</title>#', $html);
// remove comments and any content found in the the comment area (strip_tags only removes the actual tags).
$plaintext = preg_replace('#<!--.*?-->#s', '', $plaintext);
// put a space between list items (strip_tags just removes the tags).
$plaintext = preg_replace('#</li>#', ' </li>', $plaintext);
// remove all script and style tags
$plaintext = preg_replace('#<(script|style)\b[^>]*>(.*?)</(script|style)>#is', "", $plaintext);
// remove br tags (missed by strip_tags)
// remove all remaining html
$plaintext = strip_tags($plaintext);
return $plaintext;
}