Help with truncating links..

I'm working on a page that shows links from a database..

Some of the links are really long so I want to break them up with some " ... " in the link to make it display a shorter link...

For example, I'd want http://forums.digitalpoint.com/newthread.php?do=newthread&f=37 displayed something like http://forums.digitalpoint.com/n...ad&f=37

Know how I can do this?

 

you can probably use mod_rewrite to change them to whatever you want. But I'm sorry, I don't know the exact code needed. A user here called Nintendo is really good with that type of stuff. Try posting again with a mod_rewrite thread and see if you can get someone to tell you how to do it exactly.

This assumes you are on a unix server of course.

 

Yeah thanks for your post, and yeah I'm on a Linux server.

 

That's cool. Mod_rewrite is great if you can learn it or get someone to help.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/mod/mod_rewrite.html

Good luck.

 

<?php

$url = "http://forums.digitalpoint.com/newthread.php?do=newthread&f=37";

$hyperlink = "<a href=\"$url\">$url</a>";

function shrink_url( $link, $limit = 40, $dots = 5 )
{
	return sprintf('%s%s%s', substr( $link, 0, $limit ), str_pad('.', $dots, '.' ), substr( $link, strlen( $link ) - 4 ) );	
}
function format_hyperlink( $hyperlink )
{
 	if(!preg_match('~(>(.*?[^<])<)~', $hyperlink, $url )):
 		return false;
 	elseif( $url[1] ):
 		return str_replace( $url[1], shrink_url( $url[1] ), $hyperlink );		
 	endif;	
}
echo "Shrunk Url<br />\r\n";
echo shrink_url( $url ) . "\r\n";
echo "Shrunk hyperlink<br/>\r\n";
echo format_hyperlink( $hyperlink ) . "\r\n";

PHP:

 

What forums you are using if phpbb then there is a mod available to change the topic url.

 

krakjoe, that code is working great. One issue I'm having though. It does it to a URL that is real short too though. How can I only get it to truncate the URL if it's over 40 characters?

For example, the link http://wiifamily.net is shown as http://wiifamily.net...ly.net instead.

Just so you know, I modified $dots = 5 to $dots = 3 and $link, strlen( $link ) - 4 to $link, strlen( $link ) - 6.

Awaiting your response.

Thanks again so far!!

 

Fixed it. Issue resolved. Rep given to krakjoe. Thanks!!

Finished product can be seen at http://nuurl.us/stats.php.