Truncate a string in PHP

Occasionally you will get a string that is longer than what you designed for, this gets fixed by printing a set amount from the string and affixing … onto the end as a way to say it continues on.

To do this in PHP the function mb_strimwidth does the work easily.

Just define your string, set a start position which 0 is at the first character whilst -1 is the last character. Set the length to be printed including the trim marker which in this case is ‘…’

The trim marker gets attached to the end of the now shortened string.

Some examples are:

echo mb_strimwidth("This string is too long and needs cutting", 0, 10, "...");
//This st...

echo mb_strimwidth("This string is too long and needs cutting", 0, 16, "...");
//This string i...

echo mb_strimwidth("This string is too long and needs cutting", 0, 12, "-");
//This string-

Or have a trim marker in the center

$string = 'This string is too long and needs cutting';
echo mb_strimwidth($string, 0, 14, "...").mb_strimwidth($string, -11, 11, "...");
//This string...eds cutting