URL shortened...

[R1Swedie]

Hey

I see vBulletin have shortens URL's that are longer than a certain number of characters. Can you possibly share with me what the script is to do this?

Currently I just have a script to turn URL's into HREF's, but since some URL's are scary long and messed up the layout I wish to shorten the URL down, just like vBulletin does (http://www.sporthoj.com/forum/for...alongurl) .. like that with the 3 dots.

Thanks!

[R1Swedie]

or you don't reveal such big secrets? :/

[noppid]

Buffer the URL and for the href echo the whole url, for the url text echo the var shortened plus the 3 dots.

[rebby]

There probably isn't a script to do this. It's as easy as ->

$url='http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=91514';
$numchars=15;
echo '<a href="' . $url . '">' . substr($url,0,$numchars) . '...</a>'; 

If you don't want the "..."'s displayed when the string length is <= $numchars, just add some if logic using 'strlen($url)'.

That's all there is to it.

[R1Swedie]

dammit! i've asked this question in like.. 3 different forums now and I keep getting misunderstod!

I know that way of doing it, that is simple! But, what I want is...

Let's say I have this piece of text in a $string:

**************
I rock, I'm better than you, therefore, visit
http://www.isuck.com/sdf/sd/fsad/f/s...f/sdf/as/d.jpg so that you know where your home is.. yada yadyaydaydaydayd
**************

Now I want a script to pick up that URL ... and since it's so DAMN LONG, i want it shortened down to only 30 characters total and end it with "...". But of course only if it is larger than 30 characters.

Get me now? I hope =)

Thanks

[Keith]

$url = 'http://www.domain.tld/directory/file.ext';
$numchars = '30';
 
if (strlen($url) > $numchars) echo '<a href="' . $url . '">' . substr($url, 0, $numchars) . '...</a>';
else echo '<a href="' . $url . '">' . $url . '</a>'; 

like that?

[digitok]

vBulletin's URL shortener seems to work differently... It doesn't just do a simple "if it's more than 30 chars, truncate it and add ..." It adds the .'s in certain places in the string, then displays the end of the url... I don't know exactly how it's done...

I'm sure it's simple logic... eg, if the string is more than 50 chars, display the first 35, then 3 dots, then the last 15, or something like that... (I counted and it displays 35, then 3 dots, then 15...) I'll make a small piece of code and post it here in a tick.

[digitok]

Okay, I coded it, and it's rather simple... Took less than 2 minutes

<?
    $url = 'someurl';

    if (strlen($url) > 50)
        echo '<a href="',$url,'">',substr($url,0,35),'...',substr($url,-15),'</a>';

    else
        echo '<a href="',$url,'">',$url,'</a>';
?>