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Web Design > PHP > Collapsing Link Titles.

Collapsing Link Titles

Let's assume, you are creating a PHP script that will allow users to submit a URL to the database in your script. Most likely, you're allowing your readers to post a URL in a forum message or post or in a guestbook script. This means that sometimes whole URLs are inserted and some of these URLs can be extremely long, especially if they're 'copied n pasted'.

Sample long URL

code:

http://www.example.com/index.php?nav=main&cat=201&kw=whatever&language=EN&submit=verified

That's one long URL, right? If you're like me, you'd probably want your script to handle 'trimming' this long URL and present it like this:

http://www.example.com/index.p...t=verified
instead of
http://www.example.com/index.php?nav=main&cat=201&kw=whatever&language=EN&submit=verified

Function : trim_link()

I wrote this function for my scripts to handle doing just this and I have copied it here for you to copy and use freely in your own scripts.

php:



<?php
function trim_link( $link, $limit=60 )
{
  if( $limit>39 )  
  //  we test the limit that it's at least 39 characters,
  //  otherwise our presentation will look awkward!
  {
    // figure out the total length of the link title
    if( strlen($link)>$limit )
    {
      // edit the link
      // we also return the last 10 characters of the long
      // URL i.e. the '-10' value in the line below
      $link = substr( $link,0,($limit/2) ).'...'.substr($link,-10);
    }
  }
  // return the processed string
  return $link;
}
?>

Sample use of this function; trim_link()

Here's a sample page where we use this function for our URL presentation:

php:



<?php
//  Filename:test.php

$url = 'http://www.example.org/index.php?cat=webdsn&
sec=apache&page=php&lang=EN&title=whatever';

//  Echo our links but 'collapse' any url that's longer than
//  44 characters.
echo '44 = <a href="'.$url.'" target="_blank">'.trim_link($url,44).'</a>';

//  or echo our link but 'collapse' any url that's longer than
//  the default value i.e. 60 characters.
echo '60 = <a href="'.$url.'" target="_blank">'.trim_link($url).'</a>';

//  ===================================
//  FUNCTION TRIM_LINK()
//  ===================================

function trim_link( $link, $limit=60 )
{
  if( $limit>39 )  
  {
    if( strlen($link)>$limit )
    {
      $link = substr( $link,0,($limit/2) ).'...'.substr($link,-10);
    }
  }
  return $link;
}
?>

Now if we run our test.php page, we should get the following results:

44 = http://www.example.org...e=whatever
60 = http://www.example.org/index.p...e=whatever

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Web Design > PHP > Collapsing Link Titles.