substr() without destroying html

[folbert]

hi guys

fact: i have an administrationsystem that allows the administrators of a site i am developing to write news about this and that. The only HTML that I allow them to enter is the <A> tag.

on the startpage of the site, I want to print the latest news, but obly the first few words of it (allowing the user to "click here" to read more), for this purpose I use the substr() function.

problem: if an admin writes a news containing an <A> tag somewhere in the beginning, this tag might get cut of somewhere in <A HREF="abc/def.php"> causing an unfinished " to appear. Thi will, as you might imagine, ruine the rest of the page and wreck the printing of the news...

question: is there any way to make substr() to understand that he's not supposed to cut html tags? or any other workaround.

forever grateful for an answer

/Björn Folbert

[Anon]

You don't need the link in the substring, do you? Just use strip_tags() to get rid of all tags, then substr() that.

$teaser = substr( strip_tags( $article ), 0, 40 );

[folbert]

thanks man!

somehow, I always seem to miss the obvious solutions to my problems!

another positive aspect of your solution is that, in my case, i wont risk to loose the visitor att the first page du to links 🙂

/Folbert