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POUsing PHP substr() and strip_tags() while retaining formatting and without breaking HTML
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  1. POUsing PHP substr() and strip_tags() while retaining formatting and without breaking HTML
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    copied!<p>I have various HTML strings to cut to 100 characters (of the stripped content, not the original) without stripping tags and without breaking HTML.</p> <p><strong>Original HTML string</strong> (288 characters):</p> <pre><code>$content = "&lt;div&gt;With a &lt;span class='spanClass'&gt;span over here&lt;/span&gt; and a &lt;div class='divClass'&gt;nested div over &lt;div class='nestedDivClass'&gt;there&lt;/div&gt; &lt;/div&gt; and a lot of other nested &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;texts&lt;/em&gt; and tags in the air &lt;span&gt;everywhere&lt;/span&gt;, it's a HTML taggy kind of day.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/div&gt;"; </code></pre> <p><em>Standard trim:</em> Trim to 100 characters and HTML breaks, stripped content comes to ~40 characters:</p> <pre><code>$content = substr($content, 0, 100)."..."; /* output: &lt;div&gt;With a &lt;span class='spanClass'&gt;span over here&lt;/span&gt; and a &lt;div class='divClass'&gt;nested div ove... */ </code></pre> <p><em>Stripped HTML:</em> Outputs correct character count but obviously looses formatting:</p> <pre><code>$content = substr(strip_tags($content)), 0, 100)."..."; /* output: With a span over here and a nested div over there and a lot of other nested texts and tags in the ai... */ </code></pre> <p><em>Partial solution:</em> using HTML Tidy or purifier to close off tags outputs clean HTML but 100 characters of HTML not displayed content.</p> <pre><code>$content = substr($content, 0, 100)."..."; $tidy = new tidy; $tidy-&gt;parseString($content); $tidy-&gt;cleanRepair(); /* output: &lt;div&gt;With a &lt;span class='spanClass'&gt;span over here&lt;/span&gt; and a &lt;div class='divClass'&gt;nested div ove&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;... */ </code></pre> <p><em>Challenge:</em> To output clean HTML and <em>n</em> characters (excluding character count of HTML elements):</p> <pre><code>$content = cutHTML($content, 100); /* output: &lt;div&gt;With a &lt;span class='spanClass'&gt;span over here&lt;/span&gt; and a &lt;div class='divClass'&gt;nested div over &lt;div class='nestedDivClass'&gt;there&lt;/div&gt; &lt;/div&gt; and a lot of other nested &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;texts&lt;/em&gt; and tags in the ai&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/div&gt;..."; </code></pre> <p>Similar Questions</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2105169/how-to-clip-html-fragments-without-breaking-up-tags">How to clip HTML fragments without breaking up tags</a></li> <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/830283/cutting-html-strings-without-breaking-html-tags">Cutting HTML strings without breaking HTML tags</a></li> </ul>
 

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