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php - get number of characters outside of <>

I've got a code that gets the number of characters in a post...

$num_chars = strlen(utf8_decode($content));

However, I'm having some trouble in that this count includes characters in html tags <img src="...">, <a href="...">, etc.

I use the character count to display a particular layout based on how long the post is, so I need the character count to be the number of characters displayed to a reader, and to not include the html code.

Any suggestions on the most efficient way to do that?

Thanks,

Chris

Gary

strip_tags()

$num_chars = strlen(strip_tags(utf8_decode($content)));

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Ray Paseur

Is the data UTF-8? If so, PHP has mb_strlen() that might give a more accurate count. Strlen() assumes that a byte == a character, and that isn't true with UTF-8. Strip_tags() is probably OK, but it has its quirks and is notoriously unreliable with malformed (or even some well-formed) tags. Your exact results may be PHP-release dependent. You might want to check the notes on the online man page. If you set up a test case with some representative data I can show you how to test it.

Gary

It's not in UTF-8
utf8_decode

Ray Paseur

Gary: I didn't overlook that. PHP is just getting into the 21st century with respect to multi-byte character sets, and UTF8_Decode() does not always work the way we wish it would. Please see the note here:
http://php.net/manual/en/function.utf8-decode.php#104907

Some suggest using Iconv. I don't have much experience with it.

Gary

Even if the string is not decoded properly it would (should) still be the same length.
(though I may need to double check that)

edit
But granted for use elsewhere it may not be the best method.

Chris Andrews

ASKER

Is it utf-8.... is the content from a post using wordpress 3.9.1 utf-8? I'm not sure.

I have PHP 5.3.3 on the server,

Testing...

Chris

Ray Paseur

is the content from a post using wordpress 3.9.1 utf-8?

I'm not sure either. Some part of the answer may lie in what/whether the client copied and pasted from Word for Windows (thanks again, Obama).

Gary

Yes (or should be)
http://codex.wordpress.org/Converting_Database_Character_Sets

Why are you decoding the string to start with?

Chris Andrews

ASKER

Ok, well I feel stupid, but I found I am asking the wrong question.

It's actually this function that is adjusting the layout, based on word count, not character count:

//for getting word count in single.php
function wcount(){
ob_start();
the_content();
$content = ob_get_clean();
return sizeof(explode(" ", $content));
}

Now... I tried changing the $content to this:

$content = strip_tags(ob_get_clean());

and that caused a slight drop in the word count, but is still counting a lot in the html tags as words.

Gary

Post an example of the string.

Gary

str_word_count()

Splitting a string by a space isn't likely to give you a real word count

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Gary

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Chris Andrews

ASKER

Thank you both very much for your help on this!

php - get number of characters outside of &lt;&gt;

php - get number of characters outside of <>