How to shorten a string without slicing through a word while keeping within a character limit in PHP [duplicate]

Answer 1

You could use strrpos to find the last space character in the string:

function truncate($text, $length = 140) {
    if(strlen($text) > $length) {
        // $length - strlen($text) is used to find the last occurrence of a blank
        // UP TO the $length character in the string.
        $text = substr($text, 0, strrpos($text,' ', $length - strlen($text) ));
    }
    return $text;
}

It wouldn't add ... though. For this to work you can change the function to:

function truncate($text, $length = 140) {
    if(strlen($text) > $length) {
        $text = substr($text, 0, strrpos($text,' ', $length - strlen($text)-3)) . '...';
    }
    return $text;
}