Pulling a synopsis from text

[crucialmoment]

Greetings,
I am trying to automatically pull a beginning section from submitted
text and return it with a More.. link. The submitted text is in html
created by FckEditor (http://www.fckeditor.net/).
The trouble I am running into is the cutoff point is often inside of a
tag - ie after an opening <div> but the closing div is cut.
The only idea I have come up with is to build an array of all possible
html tags and search for a close for each but I am hoping there is a
cleaner method. Has anyone attempted such a feat previously?

function getSynop($input ="", $more_link="", $synop_size='75 0') {
$tmp_str = substr($input, 0, $synop_size);
$end_val = strrpos($tmp_st r, ">") + 1;
if($end_val < ($synop_size)) {
$end_val = strrpos($tmp_st r, ".") + 1;
}
if($end_val < ($synop_size)) {
$end_val = strrpos($tmp_st r, ">") + 1;
}
Return substr($input, 0, $end_val) ." <a
href='$more_lin k'>more...</a>";
}

[Chung Leong]

Re: Pulling a synopsis from text


crucialmoment wrote:[color=blue]
> Greetings,
> I am trying to automatically pull a beginning section from submitted
> text and return it with a More.. link. The submitted text is in html
> created by FckEditor (http://www.fckeditor.net/).
> The trouble I am running into is the cutoff point is often inside of a
> tag - ie after an opening <div> but the closing div is cut.
> The only idea I have come up with is to build an array of all possible
> html tags and search for a close for each but I am hoping there is a
> cleaner method. Has anyone attempted such a feat previously?
>
> function getSynop($input ="", $more_link="", $synop_size='75 0') {
> $tmp_str = substr($input, 0, $synop_size);
> $end_val = strrpos($tmp_st r, ">") + 1;
> if($end_val < ($synop_size)) {
> $end_val = strrpos($tmp_st r, ".") + 1;
> }
> if($end_val < ($synop_size)) {
> $end_val = strrpos($tmp_st r, ">") + 1;
> }
> Return substr($input, 0, $end_val) ." <a
> href='$more_lin k'>more...</a>";
> }[/color]

The trick here is to ignore the tags and only operate on what's between
the tags. Say if we have the following:

This is <div>a test</div> and this is only <div>a test.</div>

and we want 10 characters, we would look at "This is " and grab 8
characters. Then we look at "a test" and retain only 2 characters. As
we have want we need, we will retain 0 characters from " and this is
only " and "a test.". The end result will be:

This is <div>a </div><div></div>

Once the empty tags are discarded we end up with

This is <div>a </div>

which is want we want.

Here's an implementation of the technique:

<?

$s = 'This is some <strong>sampl e text</strong>. You are using <a
href="http://www.fckeditor.n et/">FCKeditor </a>.';

function synop_callback( $m) {
global $synop_char_to_ fetch;
$tag = $m[2];

// got enough characters already, return just the tag
if($synop_char_ to_fetch < 0) {
return $tag;
}

// decode HTML entities to avoid undercounting
$inner_html = $m[1];
$inner_text = html_entity_dec ode($inner_html );

if(strlen($inne r_text) > $synop_char_to_ fetch) {
// retain up to $synop_char_to_ fetch, ending
// at a word boundary
$r = preg_replace("/^(.{0,$synop_ch ar_to_fetch}\b) ?.*/", '\1',
$inner_text);
$inner_html = htmlspecialchar s(rtrim($r));
}

// substract the number of characters retained
$synop_char_to_ fetch -= strlen($inner_t ext);
return "$inner_html$ta g";
}

function synop_chop($s, $num) {
// chop off extra text beyond $num characters
global $synop_char_to_ fetch;
$synop_char_to_ fetch = $num;
$s = preg_replace_ca llback('/([^<]*)(<.*?>)?/s', 'synop_callback ',
$s);

// collapse empty tags
do {
$r = $s;
$s = preg_replace('/<(\S*?)[^>]*?>\s*<\/\1>/i', '', $r);
} while($r != $s);

// add ellipsis
$s = preg_replace('/\.?$/', '...', trim($s), 1);
return $s;
}

echo synop_chop($s, 20);

?>

[d]

Re: Pulling a synopsis from text

"crucialmom ent" <crucialmoment@ gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1143321725 .586625.135020@ g10g2000cwb.goo glegroups.com.. .[color=blue]
> Greetings,
> I am trying to automatically pull a beginning section from submitted
> text and return it with a More.. link. The submitted text is in html
> created by FckEditor (http://www.fckeditor.net/).
> The trouble I am running into is the cutoff point is often inside of a
> tag - ie after an opening <div> but the closing div is cut.
> The only idea I have come up with is to build an array of all possible
> html tags and search for a close for each but I am hoping there is a
> cleaner method. Has anyone attempted such a feat previously?
>
> function getSynop($input ="", $more_link="", $synop_size='75 0') {
> $tmp_str = substr($input, 0, $synop_size);
> $end_val = strrpos($tmp_st r, ">") + 1;
> if($end_val < ($synop_size)) {
> $end_val = strrpos($tmp_st r, ".") + 1;
> }
> if($end_val < ($synop_size)) {
> $end_val = strrpos($tmp_st r, ">") + 1;
> }
> Return substr($input, 0, $end_val) ." <a
> href='$more_lin k'>more...</a>";
> }
>[/color]

1. Get text.
2. Remove tags
3. Take first <n> characters.

$text="This is some <div>text</div> isn't it interesting. <b>send
money.</b> <i>and beer</i>";

function getSynop($input ="", $more_link="", $synop_size=750 ) {
$syn=substr(str ip_tags($text), 0, $synop_size);
return $syn." <a href='".$more_l ink.."'>more... </a>";
}

hope that helps!

dave