How can I truncate a string to the first 20 words in PHP?

Question

How can I truncate a string after 20 words in PHP?

You might find [`s($str)->words(20)`](https://github.com/delight-im/PHP-Str/blob/8fd0c608d5496d43adaa899642c1cce047e076dc/src/Str.php#L363) helpful, as found in [this standalone library](https://github.com/delight-im/PHP-Str). — caw, Jul 27 '16 at 00:42

score 149 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 03 '20 at 14:14

149

function limit_text($text, $limit) {
    if (str_word_count($text, 0) > $limit) {
        $words = str_word_count($text, 2);
        $pos   = array_keys($words);
        $text  = substr($text, 0, $pos[$limit]) . '...';
    }
    return $text;
}

echo limit_text('Hello here is a long sentence that will be truncated by the', 5);

Outputs:

Hello here is a long ...

edited Aug 03 '20 at 14:14

Nagy Nick

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answered Jun 08 '09 at 14:51

karim79

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This function confuses character count and word count when using $limit in one case as a word selector of the array $pos and in another by determining if the string is long enough. – Aaron Jul 06 '10 at 19:21
In the example provided, passing in a value of 5 ensures that the function will act on any word of length greater than 5 characters, so had the test case been "Hello here", the function fails and returns only "..." – Aaron Jul 06 '10 at 19:42
@Tegeril - noted, will delete this post. Thank you. – karim79 Jul 06 '10 at 21:01
2

`str_word_count` instead of `strlen` should do the trick :) so replace `strlen($text)` with `str_word_count($text,0)` – Val Feb 21 '12 at 15:26
1

Note on str_word_count($text, 2) from the docs `For the purpose of this function, 'word' is defined as a locale dependent string containing alphabetic characters, which also may contain, but not start with "'" and "-" characters.` you can specify additional characters in the third param, or just use `preg_split('/[\s]+/' $text);` to split by white space. – Chris Hanson Sep 23 '13 at 21:19
1

its working for english, not for Arabic language, i assume not for UTF-8? or am i missing something? – Omar N Shamali Jun 26 '18 at 14:43

score 33 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 07 '18 at 09:24

33

Change the number 3 to the number 20 below to get the first 20 words, or pass it as parameter. The following demonstrates how to get the first 3 words: (so change the 3 to 20 to change the default value):

function first3words($s, $limit=3) {
    return preg_replace('/((\w+\W*){'.($limit-1).'}(\w+))(.*)/', '${1}', $s);   
}

var_dump(first3words("hello yes, world wah ha ha"));  # => "hello yes, world"
var_dump(first3words("hello yes,world wah ha ha"));   # => "hello yes,world"
var_dump(first3words("hello yes world wah ha ha"));   # => "hello yes world"
var_dump(first3words("hello yes world"));  # => "hello yes world"
var_dump(first3words("hello yes world.")); # => "hello yes world"
var_dump(first3words("hello yes"));  # => "hello yes"
var_dump(first3words("hello"));  # => "hello"
var_dump(first3words("a")); # => "a"
var_dump(first3words(""));  # => ""

edited Aug 07 '18 at 09:24

Martijn

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answered Jun 08 '09 at 15:07

nonopolarity

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Amazing this is fastest way so far for word limiting, this performs slighty better than explode, great job, well done. – VeeeneX Jul 01 '15 at 04:58
2

Just a side note: If theres line breaks inside your string, this function will truncade every 20 words for every sentence (assuming you have a line break after every sentence). – Apr 10 '19 at 00:21
To match across lines ```((\w+[\W|\s]*){'.($limit-1).'}\w+|\W|\s)(?:(.*|\s))``` will need trim after for the trailing line breaks – Richard Muvirimi Nov 01 '21 at 12:25

Jacksonkr · Answer 3 · 2016-06-20T14:32:40.930

To Nearest Space

Truncates to nearest preceding space of target character. Demo

$str The string to be truncated
$chars The amount of characters to be stripped, can be overridden by $to_space
$to_space boolean for whether or not to truncate from space near $chars limit

Function

function truncateString($str, $chars, $to_space, $replacement="...") {
   if($chars > strlen($str)) return $str;

   $str = substr($str, 0, $chars);
   $space_pos = strrpos($str, " ");
   if($to_space && $space_pos >= 0) 
       $str = substr($str, 0, strrpos($str, " "));

   return($str . $replacement);
}

Sample

<?php

$str = "this is a string that is just some text for you to test with";

print(truncateString($str, 20, false) . "\n");
print(truncateString($str, 22, false) . "\n");
print(truncateString($str, 24, true) . "\n");
print(truncateString($str, 26, true, " :)") . "\n");
print(truncateString($str, 28, true, "--") . "\n");

?>

Output

this is a string tha...
this is a string that ...
this is a string that...
this is a string that is :)
this is a string that is--

Matthew Vines · Answer 4 · 2009-06-08T15:21:32.010

9

use explode() .

Example from the docs.

// Example 1
$pizza  = "piece1 piece2 piece3 piece4 piece5 piece6";
$pieces = explode(" ", $pizza);
echo $pieces[0]; // piece1
echo $pieces[1]; // piece2

note that explode has a limit function. So you could do something like

$message = implode(" ", explode(" ", $long_message, 20));

edited Jun 08 '09 at 15:21

answered Jun 08 '09 at 14:56

Matthew Vines

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+1 WOW, I've been using explode since ever and I've never noticed the $limit argument before. – Alix Axel Aug 13 '09 at 09:19
1

Explode's limit function does not act as suggested in this context. See http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.explode.php Example #2, positive limit. – Aaron Jul 06 '10 at 19:48
3

@Tegeril is correct. Though this would fix it: `$words = implode(" ", array_slice( explode(" ", $t), 0, $count) );` – Dominik Feb 01 '14 at 00:02
1

@Dominik, You nailed it. This worked immediately, its simple, very understandable and efficient. Thanks to you and to Tegeril for the first part. – Samuel Ramzan Apr 03 '19 at 19:01

score 7 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 01 '14 at 15:04

7

Simple and fully equiped truncate() method:

function truncate($string, $width, $etc = ' ..')
{
    $wrapped = explode('$trun$', wordwrap($string, $width, '$trun$', false), 2);
    return $wrapped[0] . (isset($wrapped[1]) ? $etc : '');
}

answered Mar 01 '14 at 15:04

acecream

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This is what I use.. was going to add something like this as an answer so upvoting you instead ;-) – Eaten by a Grue Feb 01 '16 at 21:38

score 7 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 08 '09 at 14:51

7

Try regex.

You need something that would match 20 words (or 20 word boundaries).

So (my regex is terrible so correct me if this isn't accurate):

/(\w+\b){20}/

And here are some examples of regex in php.

answered Jun 08 '09 at 14:51

Assaf Lavie

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It could be the best answer. – Vishal Kumar Sahu Nov 06 '18 at 03:36

score 5 · Answer 7 · edited May 25 '15 at 21:38

Its not my own creation, its a modification of previous posts. credits goes to karim79.

function limit_text($text, $limit) {
    $strings = $text;
      if (strlen($text) > $limit) {
          $words = str_word_count($text, 2);
          $pos = array_keys($words);
          if(sizeof($pos) >$limit)
          {
            $text = substr($text, 0, $pos[$limit]) . '...';
          }
          return $text;
      }
      return $text;
    }

score 4 · Answer 8 · answered Aug 03 '14 at 13:35

With triple dots:

function limitWords($text, $limit) {
    $word_arr = explode(" ", $text);

    if (count($word_arr) > $limit) {
        $words = implode(" ", array_slice($word_arr , 0, $limit) ) . ' ...';
        return $words;
    }

    return $text;
}

score 4 · Answer 9 · answered Dec 26 '18 at 07:06

4

If you code on Laravel just use Illuminate\Support\Str

here is example

Str::words($category->publication->title, env('WORDS_COUNT_HOME'), '...')

Hope this was helpful.

answered Dec 26 '18 at 07:06

Mikayel Margaryan

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score 4 · Answer 10 · answered Jun 08 '09 at 14:49

4

Split the string (into an array) by <space>, and then take the first 20 elements of that array.

answered Jun 08 '09 at 14:49

lance

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which function would i use to split? – sanders Jun 08 '09 at 14:50
won't work if there are punctuations but with no space after them, such as "hello,world". – nonopolarity Jun 08 '09 at 14:58
2

@Jian Lin That's a problem with the user entering poor data, not the script. – ceejayoz Jun 08 '09 at 14:59
1

@Jian just define your delimiter to be all punctuation (,.;) etc – z - Jun 08 '09 at 15:01
@ceejayoz shouldn't the script handle bad user data too? – nonopolarity Jun 08 '09 at 15:31
User input is an assumption that might be false? – lance Jun 08 '09 at 15:46
`split()` is depreceated – geoff Apr 30 '14 at 23:15
Deprecated, @geoff. – Apr 09 '19 at 23:00
That would treat two words separated by newline as one word. – piotrpog May 21 '19 at 12:59

score 4 · Answer 11 · answered Jun 08 '09 at 14:50

4

This looks pretty good to me:

A common problem when creating dynamic web pages (where content is sourced from a database, content management system or external source such as an RSS feed) is that the input text can be too long and cause the page layout to 'break'.

One solution is to truncate the text so that it fits on the page. This sounds simple, but often the results aren't as expected due to words and sentences being cut off at inappropriate points.

answered Jun 08 '09 at 14:50

Andrew Hare

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In what is that an answer to OP's question? – MrUpsidown Nov 18 '15 at 17:57
@AndrewHare I think you're overshooting the question. – jpaugh Nov 19 '15 at 00:24

score 2 · Answer 12 · answered Jun 03 '15 at 09:10

This worked me for UNICODE (UTF8) sentences too:

function myUTF8truncate($string, $width){
    if (mb_str_word_count($string) > $width) {
        $string= preg_replace('/((\w+\W*|| [\p{L}]+\W*){'.($width-1).'}(\w+))(.*)/', '${1}', $string);
    }
    return $string;
}

score 2 · Answer 13 · edited Oct 16 '17 at 08:04

2

Try below code,

 $text  = implode(' ', array_slice(explode(' ', $text), 0, 32))
 echo $text;

edited Oct 16 '17 at 08:04

Jaywant Khedkar

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answered Oct 16 '17 at 07:10

shunram it

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score 2 · Answer 14 · answered Sep 29 '11 at 00:36

based on 動靜能量's answer:

function truncate_words($string,$words=20) {
 return preg_replace('/((\w+\W*){'.($words-1).'}(\w+))(.*)/', '${1}', $string);
}

or

function truncate_words_with_ellipsis($string,$words=20,$ellipsis=' ...') {
 $new = preg_replace('/((\w+\W*){'.($words-1).'}(\w+))(.*)/', '${1}', $string);
 if($new != $string){
  return $new.$ellipsis;
 }else{
  return $string;
 }

}

score 2 · Answer 15 · answered Jun 08 '09 at 14:51

2

Something like this could probably do the trick:

<?php 
$words = implode(' ', array_slice(split($input, ' ', 21), 0, 20));

answered Jun 08 '09 at 14:51

mikl

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score 2 · Answer 16 · answered Jun 08 '09 at 14:57

use PHP tokenizer function strtok() in a loop.

$token = strtok($string, " "); // we assume that words are separated by sapce or tab
$i = 0;
$first20Words = '';
while ($token !== false && $i < 20) {
    $first20Words .= $token;
    $token = strtok(" ");
    $i++;
}
echo $first20Words;

score 1 · Answer 17 · answered Oct 05 '12 at 14:25

1

Another solution :)

$aContent = explode(' ', $cContent);
$cContent = '';
$nCount = count($aContent);
for($nI = 0; ($nI < 20 && $nI < $nCount); $nI++) {
   $cContent .= $aContent[$nI] . ' ';
}
trim($cContent, ' ');
echo '<p>' . $cContent . '</p>';

answered Oct 05 '12 at 14:25

thejaeck.net

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score 1 · Answer 18 · answered Nov 25 '17 at 17:57

To limit words, am using the following little code :

    $string = "hello world ! I love chocolate.";
    $explode = array_slice(explode(' ', $string), 0, 4);
    $implode = implode(" ",$explode);   
    echo $implode;

$implot will give : hello world ! I

score 1 · Answer 19 · answered Dec 19 '17 at 12:36

function getShortString($string,$wordCount,$etc = true) 
{
     $expString = explode(' ',$string);
     $wordsInString = count($expString);
     if($wordsInString >= $wordCount )
     {
         $shortText = '';
         for($i=0; $i < $wordCount-1; $i++)
         {
             $shortText .= $expString[$i].' ';
         }
         return  $etc ? $shortText.='...' : $shortText; 
     }
     else return $string;
}

score 1 · Answer 20 · answered Sep 29 '11 at 21:31

Here is what I have implemented.

function summaryMode($text, $limit, $link) {
    if (str_word_count($text, 0) > $limit) {
        $numwords = str_word_count($text, 2);
        $pos = array_keys($numwords);
        $text = substr($text, 0, $pos[$limit]).'... <a href="'.$link.'">Read More</a>';
    }
    return $text;
}

As you can see it is based off karim79's answer, all that needed changing was that the if statement also needed to check against words not characters.

I also added a link to main function for convenience. So far it hsa worked flawlessly. Thanks to the original solution provider.

score 1 · Answer 21 · answered Jan 10 '12 at 08:29

Here's one I use:

    $truncate = function( $str, $length ) {
        if( strlen( $str ) > $length && false !== strpos( $str, ' ' ) ) {
            $str = preg_split( '/ [^ ]*$/', substr( $str, 0, $length ));
            return htmlspecialchars($str[0]) . '&hellip;';
        } else {
            return htmlspecialchars($str);
        }
    };
    return $truncate( $myStr, 50 );

pamekar · Answer 22 · 2018-06-20T13:57:41.633

Lets assume we have the string variables $string, $start, and $limit we can borrow 3 or 4 functions from PHP to achieve this. They are:

script_tags() PHP function to remove the unnecessary HTML and PHP tags (if there are any). This wont be necessary, if there are no HTML or PHP tags.
explode() to split the $string into an array
array_splice() to specify the number of words and where it'll start from. It'll be controlled by vallues assigned to our $start and $limit variables.

and finally, implode() to join the array elements into your truncated string..

function truncateString($string, $start, $limit){
    $stripped_string =strip_tags($string); // if there are HTML or PHP tags
    $string_array =explode(' ',$stripped_string);
    $truncated_array = array_splice($string_array,$start,$limit);
    $truncated_string=implode(' ',$truncated_array);

    return $truncated_string;
}

It's that simple..

I hope this was helpful.

What does this add that the literally dozens of answers this question already has doesn't? — GordonM, Jun 20 '18 at 14:02

score 0 · Answer 23 · edited Aug 07 '18 at 09:19

0

function limitText($string,$limit){
        if(strlen($string) > $limit){
                $string = substr($string, 0,$limit) . "...";
        }
        return $string;
}

this will return 20 words. I hope it will help

edited Aug 07 '18 at 09:19

Community

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1

answered Jun 23 '18 at 11:11

Programmyx

3
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score 0 · Answer 24 · answered Jun 26 '18 at 14:54

I made my function:

function summery($text, $limit) {
    $words=preg_split('/\s+/', $text);
     $count=count(preg_split('/\s+/', $text));
      if ($count > $limit) {
          $text=NULL;
          for($i=0;$i<$limit;$i++)
              $text.=$words[$i].' ';
          $text.='...';
      }
      return $text;
    }

score 0 · Answer 25 · answered Mar 05 '19 at 22:05

0

$text='some text';
$len=strlen($text);
    $limit=500;
// char
    if($len>$limit){
        $text=substr($text,0,$limit);
        $words=explode(" ", $text);
        $wcount=count($words);
        $ll=strlen($words[$wcount]);
        $text=substr($text,0,($limit-$ll+1)).'...';
    }

answered Mar 05 '19 at 22:05

Mohamad Kafash

1

Welcome to Stack Overflow! Please don't answer just with source code. Try to provide a nice description about how your solution works. See: [stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-answer](https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-answer). Thanks! – Matt Ke Mar 05 '19 at 22:21

score 0 · Answer 26 · answered Jul 16 '20 at 09:38

function wordLimit($str, $limit) {
    $arr = explode(' ', $str);
    if(count($arr) <= $limit){
        return $str;   
    }
    $result = '';
    for($i = 0; $i < $limit; $i++){
        $result .= $arr[$i].' ';
    }
    return trim($result);
}
echo wordLimit('Hello Word', 1); // Hello
echo wordLimit('Hello Word', 2); // Hello Word
echo wordLimit('Hello Word', 3); // Hello Word
echo wordLimit('Hello Word', 0); // ''

score 0 · Answer 27 · answered Oct 11 '21 at 20:28

Truncate the text surrounding a specific set of keywords.

The goal is to be able to convert this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna liqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam.

Into this:

...consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor...

Which is a very common situation when displaying search results, excerpts, etc.

I've posted a solution to that specific casuistic in this thread, hoping that it would be helpful for people landing here, too.

https://stackoverflow.com/a/69532106/3198983

score -1 · Answer 28 · answered Jun 08 '09 at 15:30

-1

what about

chunk_split($str,20);

Entry in the PHP Manual

answered Jun 08 '09 at 15:30

fly.floh

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This is not useful because it doesn't recognize words, just string/character length. – mickmackusa Nov 09 '17 at 22:52

score -2 · Answer 29 · answered Mar 07 '19 at 14:13

-2

    function limit_word($start,$limit,$text){
            $limit=$limit-1;
            $stripped_string =strip_tags($text);
            $string_array =explode(' ',$stripped_string);
            if(count($string_array)>$limit){
            $truncated_array = array_splice($string_array,$start,$limit);
            $text=implode(' ',$truncated_array).'...';
            return($text);
            }
            else{return($text);}
    }

answered Mar 07 '19 at 14:13

Mohamad Kafash

1

1

2 answers in two days with only a code sample in a old post. you definitely should read this : https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-answer. – Frankich Mar 07 '19 at 14:39
Can you explain that further? Why do you need all that code, and what **exactly** does it do? – Nico Haase Mar 07 '19 at 14:50

How can I truncate a string to the first 20 words in PHP?

29 Answers29

To Nearest Space

Output

Another solution :)

Truncate the text surrounding a specific set of keywords.

Linked

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