Splitting up long URLs

[Brian Dunning]

I have a web page that lists "most recent comments" in a left margin.  
Sometimes people post long URLs, or even just really really long  
words, that force that margin to display way too wide, screwing up the  
page layout. Is there a way to make sure URLs or other text in a  
string gets split up so this doesn't happen?

If there's a CSS solution that's better than a PHP solution I'll take  
that too.   :-)

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[Robert Cummings]

On Tue, 2008-07-01 at 13:26 -0700, Brian Dunning wrote:
> I have a web page that lists "most recent comments" in a left margin.  
> Sometimes people post long URLs, or even just really really long  
> words, that force that margin to display way too wide, screwing up the  
> page layout. Is there a way to make sure URLs or other text in a  
> string gets split up so this doesn't happen?
>
> If there's a CSS solution that's better than a PHP solution I'll take  
> that too.   :-)

You need to manually chop them. The wordwrap() function should be able
to do it for you. Although, you'll have issues with HTML if I recall
correctly. CSS will not do it for you unless you want to have overflow
and either hide the overflow or have scrollbars appear.

Cheers,
Rob.
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[Boyd, Todd M.]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brian Dunning [mailto:brian@...]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2008 3:27 PM
> To: php-general@...
> Subject: [PHP] Splitting up long URLs
>
> I have a web page that lists "most recent comments" in a left margin.
> Sometimes people post long URLs, or even just really really long
> words, that force that margin to display way too wide, screwing up the
> page layout. Is there a way to make sure URLs or other text in a
> string gets split up so this doesn't happen?
>
> If there's a CSS solution that's better than a PHP solution I'll take
> that too.   :-)

STFW: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-text/#white-space

...doesn't say much in the article about whether or not it will break up
"words" rather than lines, but it's worth a shot.


Todd Boyd
Web Programmer




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[Nate Tallman]

If you want to do it on the php side, I would do something like this:

<a href="$fullURL">substr($fullURL, 0, 9)."..."</a>

It would provide a valid link using the full url, but chop off everything
after the 10th character and replace with a "...".

Nate

On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 3:45 PM, Boyd, Todd M. <tmboyd1@...> wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Brian Dunning [mailto:brian@...]
> > Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2008 3:27 PM
> > To: php-general@...
> > Subject: [PHP] Splitting up long URLs
> >
> > I have a web page that lists "most recent comments" in a left margin.
> > Sometimes people post long URLs, or even just really really long
> > words, that force that margin to display way too wide, screwing up the
> > page layout. Is there a way to make sure URLs or other text in a
> > string gets split up so this doesn't happen?
> >
> > If there's a CSS solution that's better than a PHP solution I'll take
> > that too.   :-)
>
> STFW: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-text/#white-space
>
> ...doesn't say much in the article about whether or not it will break up
> "words" rather than lines, but it's worth a shot.
>
>
> Todd Boyd
> Web Programmer
>
>
>
>
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>
>

[Jason Norwood-Young-2]

On Tue, 2008-07-01 at 13:26 -0700, Brian Dunning wrote:
> I have a web page that lists "most recent comments" in a left margin.  
> Sometimes people post long URLs, or even just really really long  
> words, that force that margin to display way too wide, screwing up the  
> page layout. Is there a way to make sure URLs or other text in a  
> string gets split up so this doesn't happen?
>
> If there's a CSS solution that's better than a PHP solution I'll take  
> that too.   :-)
>

For URLs you can do a tinyurl-type solution. Quite easy in fact. Just
save the long url in a db table, along with a short url (say a
4-character random string). Then do a page that looks up the short url
and redirects to a long url (eg. http://www.myblog.com/r?id=Sve7
redirects to http://www.veryverylongurl.com/blahblahblah.php). For extra
points you can make the short url look like http://tiny.myblog.com/Sve7.
Just remember to put the short url creation in a loop that checks that
the short url isn't in the DB already and repeat if it is.

For long words, you could explode the words into an array, and if the
words are longer than a certain length, insert a hyphen and space for
your wrap. Then just implode back into your string and bob's your uncle.

Anyhow that's how I'd do it.

J


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[Jason Norwood-Young-2]

On Wed, 2008-07-02 at 08:23 +0200, Jason Norwood-Young wrote:
> For URLs you can do a tinyurl-type solution.

Dur, just realised it's only *display* that you're worried about so
shortening the url isn't really an issue. It's too early in the
morning...



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[Philip Thompson-4]

On Jul 1, 2008, at 4:27 PM, Nate Tallman wrote:

> If you want to do it on the php side, I would do something like this:
>
> <a href="$fullURL">substr($fullURL, 0, 9)."..."</a>
>
> It would provide a valid link using the full url, but chop off  
> everything
> after the 10th character and replace with a "...".
>
> Nate

I've seen some sites(/browsers?) do something similar to this - they  
show the first of the URL and some of the last. For example...

<?php
$url = "http://www.letshaveareallylongurl.com/somedirectory/".
        "somelocation/someplace/32j1580/ksaladfji/".
        "dji23adf/adfjadf/dja9Jkda.html";
$len = strlen ($url);
$shortLen = 40;
$longLen = 100;

if ($len > ($shortLen + 10)) {
     if ($len > $longLen) {
         // Show first and last of the url
         $newUrl = substr ($url, 0, $shortLen) . '...' . substr ($url,  
-10);
     } else {
         // Only show first
         $newUrl = substr ($url, 0, $shortLen+7) . '...';
     }
} else { $newUrl = $url; }

echo "<a href=\"$url\">$newUrl</a>";
?>

This output would be:
http://www.letshaveareallylongurl.com/so...9Jkda.html

Of course, you can change the lengths around to suit your needs. Just  
another way to skin the cat.

~Philip

> On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 3:45 PM, Boyd, Todd M. <tmboyd1@...>  
> wrote:
>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Brian Dunning [mailto:brian@...]
>>> Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2008 3:27 PM
>>> To: php-general@...
>>> Subject: [PHP] Splitting up long URLs
>>>
>>> I have a web page that lists "most recent comments" in a left  
>>> margin.
>>> Sometimes people post long URLs, or even just really really long
>>> words, that force that margin to display way too wide, screwing up  
>>> the
>>> page layout. Is there a way to make sure URLs or other text in a
>>> string gets split up so this doesn't happen?
>>>
>>> If there's a CSS solution that's better than a PHP solution I'll  
>>> take
>>> that too.   :-)
>>
>> STFW: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-text/#white-space
>>
>> ...doesn't say much in the article about whether or not it will  
>> break up
>> "words" rather than lines, but it's worth a shot.
>>
>>
>> Todd Boyd
>> Web Programmer

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[Daniel Brown-5]

On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 4:26 PM, Brian Dunning <brian@...> wrote:
> I have a web page that lists "most recent comments" in a left margin.
> Sometimes people post long URLs, or even just really really long words, that
> force that margin to display way too wide, screwing up the page layout. Is
> there a way to make sure URLs or other text in a string gets split up so
> this doesn't happen?

    You could display the URL's the way Google handles them:

<?php

function shortenURL($longURL) {
        preg_match('/\/?[a-z0-9\.\-]+\//Ui',$longURL,$matches);
        $shortURL = str_replace('/','',$matches[0]);
        return $shortURL;
}

$longURL = "http://some-SPAM-URL-011.example.com/v14gra/p3n15_pump.php?affil=43ERG3245wert002934&boo=yaa!";

echo "<a href=\"".$longURL."\">".shortenURL($longURL)."</a><br />\n";
?>

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[tedd-2]

At 11:57 AM -0400 7/7/08, Daniel Brown wrote:

>     You could display the URL's the way Google handles them:
>
><?php
>
>function shortenURL($longURL) {
>         preg_match('/\/?[a-z0-9\.\-]+\//Ui',$longURL,$matches);
>         $shortURL = str_replace('/','',$matches[0]);
>         return $shortURL;
>}
>
>$longURL =
>"http://some-SPAM-URL-011.example.com/v14gra/p3n15_pump.php?affil=43ERG3245wert002934&boo=yaa!";
>
>echo "<a href=\"".$longURL."\">".shortenURL($longURL)."</a><br />\n";
>?>
>

Very nice.

However, there isn't a way to change what the user see's in the
browser's url box, is there?

For example, can you send a user to http://example.com/a.php, but
they see http://example.com/b.php in their browser?

Cheers,

tedd
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[Bastien Koert-3]

On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 12:54 PM, tedd <tedd.sperling@...> wrote:

> At 11:57 AM -0400 7/7/08, Daniel Brown wrote:
>
>>    You could display the URL's the way Google handles them:
>>
>> <?php
>>
>> function shortenURL($longURL) {
>>        preg_match('/\/?[a-z0-9\.\-]+\//Ui',$longURL,$matches);
>>        $shortURL = str_replace('/','',$matches[0]);
>>        return $shortURL;
>> }
>>
>> $longURL = "
>> http://some-SPAM-URL-011.example.com/v14gra/p3n15_pump.php?affil=43ERG3245wert002934&boo=yaa
>> !";
>>
>> echo "<a href=\"".$longURL."\">".shortenURL($longURL)."</a><br />\n";
>> ?>
>>
>>
> Very nice.
>
> However, there isn't a way to change what the user see's in the browser's
> url box, is there?
>
> For example, can you send a user to http://example.com/a.php, but they see
> http://example.com/b.php in their browser?
>
> Cheers,
>
> tedd
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>

apache's mod_rewrite can do that

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Cat, the other other white meat

[Andrew Ballard-2]

On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 12:54 PM, tedd <tedd.sperling@...> wrote:

> At 11:57 AM -0400 7/7/08, Daniel Brown wrote:
>>
>>    You could display the URL's the way Google handles them:
>>
>> <?php
>>
>> function shortenURL($longURL) {
>>        preg_match('/\/?[a-z0-9\.\-]+\//Ui',$longURL,$matches);
>>        $shortURL = str_replace('/','',$matches[0]);
>>        return $shortURL;
>> }
>>
>> $longURL =
>> "http://some-SPAM-URL-011.example.com/v14gra/p3n15_pump.php?affil=43ERG3245wert002934&boo=yaa!";
>>
>> echo "<a href=\"".$longURL."\">".shortenURL($longURL)."</a><br />\n";
>> ?>
>>
>
> Very nice.
>
> However, there isn't a way to change what the user see's in the browser's
> url box, is there?
>
> For example, can you send a user to http://example.com/a.php, but they see
> http://example.com/b.php in their browser?
>
> Cheers,
>
> tedd

Sounds pretty phishy to me, tedd. :-)

Andrew

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[tedd-2]

At 12:05 PM -0400 7/8/08, Andrew Ballard wrote:

>  > However, there isn't a way to change what the user see's in the browser's
>>  url box, is there?
>>
>>  For example, can you send a user to http://example.com/a.php, but they see
>>  http://example.com/b.php in their browser?
>>
>>  Cheers,
>>
>>  tedd
>
>Sounds pretty phishy to me, tedd. :-)
>
>Andrew

Andrew:

Yes, but there's nothing wrong with learning -- it's like talking to
other women while you're married, it's what you do with the
information that makes it right or wrong.

Cheers,

tedd
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[Robert Cummings]

On Tue, 2008-07-08 at 12:42 -0400, tedd wrote:

> At 12:05 PM -0400 7/8/08, Andrew Ballard wrote:
> >  > However, there isn't a way to change what the user see's in the browser's
> >>  url box, is there?
> >>
> >>  For example, can you send a user to http://example.com/a.php, but they see
> >>  http://example.com/b.php in their browser?
> >>
> >>  Cheers,
> >>
> >>  tedd
> >
> >Sounds pretty phishy to me, tedd. :-)
> >
> >Andrew
>
> Andrew:
>
> Yes, but there's nothing wrong with learning -- it's like talking to
> other women while you're married, it's what you do with the
> information that makes it right or wrong.

That reminds me of something I heard on TV a long time ago...

    Just because I've ordered doesn't mean I can't keep looking at
    the menu.

:)

Personally, me and the missus have more fun teasing each other when we
find the other's eyes wandering.

Cheers,
Rob.
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[tedd-2]

At 2:07 PM -0400 7/8/08, Robert Cummings wrote:

>On Tue, 2008-07-08 at 12:42 -0400, tedd wrote:
>  > At 12:05 PM -0400 7/8/08, Andrew Ballard wrote:
>  > >Sounds pretty phishy to me, tedd. :-)
>>  >
>>  >Andrew
>>
>>  Andrew:
>>
>>  Yes, but there's nothing wrong with learning -- it's like talking to
>>  other women while you're married, it's what you do with the
>>  information that makes it right or wrong.
>
>That reminds me of something I heard on TV a long time ago...
>
>     Just because I've ordered doesn't mean I can't keep looking at
>     the menu.
>
>:)

I heard it:

"Just because I'm on a diet doesn't mean I can't look at the menu."

I also like:

"I gave sex up for food and now I can't even get into my own pants."

Cheers,

tedd

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