Caution: This documentation is for eZ Publish legacy, from version 3.x to 6.x.
For 5.x documentation covering Platform see eZ Documentation Center, for difference between legacy and Platform see 5.x Architecture overview.

shorten

Summary

Returns a shortened version of the input string.

Usage

input|shorten( [ length [, sequence [, trim_type ] ] ] )

Parameters

NameTypeDescriptionRequired
length integer The desired length of the returned string. No.
sequence string Custom trailing/end-sequence. No.
trim_type string Controls the type of trimming: "right" (default) or "middle". No.

Returns

A shortened version of the input string.

Description

This operator shortens the input string to "length" characters and adds a trailing sequence. Please note that the "length" parameter also includes the length of the trailing sequence. If the input string is shorter than "length", it will not be shortened. The default length is 80, the default trailing sequence is three dots: "...". The third parameter controls the type of trimming, it can be set to either "right" (default) or "middle".

Examples

Example 1

{'Led Zeppelin rocks!'|shorten( 15 )}

The following output will be produced: "Led Zeppelin...".

Example 2

{"eZ Systems"|shorten( 7, '...' , 'middle' )}

The following output will be produced: "eZ...ms".

Balazs Halasy (05/02/2004 10:59 am)

Svitlana Shatokhina (06/04/2006 1:46 pm)

Comments

  • Beware of xml :)

    Thursday 01 March 2007 2:46:10 pm

    P. Renaud

    Shorten is a "as is" operator, and will shorten crudely your xml text, counting tags as simple text, and producing seemingly strange output.
    A solution is to use the Php strip_tags operator, as follows :
    {def $xml_content=$node.data_map.champ_xml.data_text}
{def $text_content=$xml_content|strip_tags()}
{$text_content|shorten(100)}

    In order to be able to use strip_tags, you have to add it to authorized eZ template operators. Edit the template.ini.append.php file of your siteaccess (create it if it does not exist), and add
    [PHP]
PHPOperatorList[strip_tags]=strip_tags


    Forum links :
    http://ez.no/community/forum/setu...g_text_from_summarizing_ezxmltext__1
    http://ez.no/community/forum/deve...e_item_shorten_100_is_not_working__1

  • A more flexible way

    Saturday 10 March 2007 10:46:24 am

    Xavier

    Your solution has a major problem: it destroys all the new lines and screws the layout.

    This extension allows to shorten the xml result, even while keeping all (or a selection of) xml tags.

    http://projects.ez.no/xmlwash

    as an added bonus, it offers a bigger security, no matter your ez config.

  • Beware of entities

    Friday 30 November 2007 3:45:30 pm

    Adrien

    The final string length take in count the length of the substitution string.
    $str|shorten(count($alt),$alt) permet donc de remplacer la chaîne $str par $alt dès que $str est plus longue que $alt.

    Let test the ellipsis :
    |shorten(80)
    Lorem ipsu10m dolor 20sit amet30, consec40tetur ad50ipisicin60g elit, 70sed...
    |shorten(80,'')
    Lorem ipsu10m dolor 20sit amet30, consec40tetur ad50ipisicin60g elit, 70sed do
    |shorten(80,'…')
    Lorem ipsu10m dolor 20sit amet30, consec40tetur ad50ipisicin60g elit, 70sed d…
    |shorten(80,'…')
    Lorem ipsu10m dolor 20sit amet30, consec40tetur ad50ipisicin60g elit,…
    |shorten(87,'…')
    Lorem ipsu10m dolor 20sit amet30, consec40tetur ad50ipisicin60g elit, 70sed d…


    If you don't want the ellipsis, just say it.
    If you wan't the UTF-8 real ellipsis, use the HTML entity and add 7 to the desired length to correct the entity count.

    • Re: Beware of entities

      Friday 30 November 2007 3:53:08 pm

      Adrien

      Notice that using directly the UTF-8 char simply doesn't work in my case. Can someone check if shorten deals with UTF-8 chars correctly? And I'm sudendly affraid by what's gonna happen next time I'll have to pass a UTF-8 char to a string function…