I wrote an article a while ago called “the anatomy of a jQuery plugin“, since then I have written a few jQuery plugins of my own, which I would now like to share with you. The first in the series is called ‘truncatable‘. Simply put truncatable is a lightweight truncation plugin for jQuery. Designed for users who want to be able to hide and expand text on a page. This plugin is very SEO friendly, and ideal for environments where it is not possible to use PHP.
Usage
To use the plugin simply add an id or class to the text that you would like to truncate:
<p class="myClass"> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Etiam fringilla, purus a ultrices blandit, odio ante scelerisque neque, vitae imperdiet odio velit ac nisl. Sed tortor metus, placerat condimentum, feugiat in, feugiat adipiscing, mi. Donec pulvinar sem vitae leo. eget lectus et ligula hendrerit </p>
You will need to call the plugin in the head of your document. Please note that you will will need to include jQuery before you call the plugin:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3/jquery.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.truncatable.js"></script>
To initate the plugin simply call it on your class like so:
$(function {
$(".myClass").truncatable();
});Options for truncatable
truncatable enables the user to define the limit of letters to be displayed on the truncatable plugin. As a default 100 words will be display unless you specify otherwise like so:
$(".myClass").truncatable({limit: 200});Demo
To see the plugin in action why not check out the demo. I have tested the plugin and can confirm that it runs on the lastest version on jQuery(V1.3.2) and works on IE Safari and Firefox. Happy coding!
Version History
05/08/2009 – Version 1.0
20/08/2009 – Version 1.2
Since I recieved so much great feedback I have updated my plugin with a few of additional features and fixes. currently at 1.1. You can now:
- Display a link to hide the text once you have expanded it. As well as defining what that text says.
- Intelligent truncation, The plugin now completes the last word before truncation commences.
To apply these new features simply download the latest version of the plugin above and apply these additional parameters:
$('.myClass').truncatable({ limit: 200, more: '.....', less: true, hideText: '[hide]' });
August 6th, 2009
Looks useful. Much better than my .net hack I had to produce last year! Will be using. Is there any way for it to round whole words only?
« Reply
August 6th, 2009
Thanks Paul, its definitely something I can look into doing! Watch this space
« Reply
August 6th, 2009
It would also be nice if.. within a tolerance, it would stop at the previous period (end of a sentence) too.
« Reply
August 18th, 2009
It would be great if you could also show less of it after expanding the text, your demo doesn’t seem to be able to do that
« Reply
August 19th, 2009
Great start, but there are two important things missing:
1. This plugin needs to trim the string as all spaces before and after the string are counted.
2. If there is any html in the string, this will duplicate part of the html string if the truncation occurs within an html tag block.
« Reply
August 20th, 2009
Thanks for all the suggestions guys! I’m prototyping a new version which will offer more features and functionality. I will update this post when its launched!
« Reply
August 22nd, 2009
Just what I was looking for. Thank you.
« Reply
November 15th, 2009
Hi, Thanks for the plugin it is working just fine and it is the only one I found that I can apply to multiple classes across the same HTML. I have one question though, can you make an option to disable the expansion of the text?? in other word what ever I choose for the more option, just shows but not as a link? I want to use the plug in on a site I’m coding now where I will use it on the archive listing pages where I want to truncate the titles and descriptions of the different articles and I do not want to show the hidden text (though want to keep hidden on the page for SE) if the user chooses to know more he will then have to click the title (even if truncated) to go the article page.
I’m new to JQuery plugins development – still finding my way around – and would need your help to customize the plugin to act as I stated above.
Thanks again for the plugin and awaiting your reply.
« Reply
philipbeel Reply:
November 16th, 2009 at 9:08 am
@Ashraf – Thanks for your comment. You could bypass your problem by wrapping your individual truncated text elements in an anchor links. this might be a more usable way to navigate to pages. Alternatively you could modify the plugin, but it would need to be dynamic enough that it would know what page your link needed to go to. However I am afraid this would take it out of scope for a general release. I hope this helps.
« Reply
Matth Jenks Reply:
March 6th, 2013 at 5:01 pm
@philipbeel, @ashraf
You might try using “Badonkatrunc.” (badonkatrunc.com) I just tried it and ditched it in favor of using Truncatable, once I realized it has no “click for more” elipsis functionality.
It looks very well-written but it ONLY truncates, and does not have any feature for expanding the text.
« Reply
November 17th, 2009
Excellent! I only have one problem with it. I’m using this for the tags below each post on a blog. The tags are surrounded by elements. Truncatable counts the chars in the tags which makes it hard to calculate after how many chars it should clip the content. If I set the char limit so that it clips right inside an element (this happens in some posts as the tags bound to a post differs from post to post) it prints out unformatted html, like: rel=”tag”>
http://henrik.nyh.se/2008/02/jquery-html-truncate doesn’t do this but instead it doesn’t recognize words like Truncatable and clips them hard. Perhaps you could borrow some code from Henrik Nyh.
« Reply
November 17th, 2009
WordPress seems to have messed with the formatting of my comment. Here it is in better shape: http://pastebin.com/f11c7d3e0
« Reply
philipbeel Reply:
November 18th, 2009 at 9:00 am
@Mikeal – Thanks for the heads up I will look into fixing this in the next release! Much appreciated!
« Reply
November 18th, 2009
If the truncatable is used on a string that looks like:
Hello World
and if the limit is set to 20, would I get
Hello
or
Hello <a href="
« Reply
November 18th, 2009
@philipbeel – Sounds great
« Reply
December 19th, 2009
Hi, first of all, very nice plugin. However, your onclick handler for the ‘more’ link doesn’t return false, so the page scrolls up when you click on it. I would suggest returning false, just like you do for the ‘less’. Also, your code is missing a few semicolons here and there. I would suggest running it through jslint to make sure it is error free. Thank you and good luck!
« Reply
Vic Swift Reply:
June 29th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
@Ramin, any chance you can tell me where to put the return false to stop the page scrolling?
« Reply
Ramin Reply:
June 29th, 2010 at 2:59 pm
@Vic Swift, here are the errors found when I run it through jslint.com:
http://gist.github.com/457242
And here’s the code with the errors and warnings removed and the return false statement in the right place. The code formatting was removed when I downloaded it, so I had to run it through this first: http://jsbeautifier.org/
http://gist.github.com/457245
« Reply
Vic Swift Reply:
June 29th, 2010 at 8:34 pm
@Ramin, I worked it out in the end but wouldn’t have spotted the other stuff so big thanks for this.
philipbeel Reply:
June 30th, 2010 at 10:40 am
Hi Guys, I am going to be updating the plugin soon so thanks for all the feedback it will make bug tracking a lot easier!
February 1st, 2010
Hi Philip,
thanks for the great plugin. I’ve tried it for my site and then I realized that it didn’t work, I’ve started to troubleshoot and then find out that it wasn’t working because my “tags” were dynamically loaded.
I solved it by changing the “bind” in your source to “live”.
hope that I helped
« Reply
philipbeel Reply:
February 2nd, 2010 at 8:55 am
@Sallaboy, thank you for your feedback much appreciated, I will look at adding this revision into the next release, Thanks!
« Reply
March 1st, 2010
Is it possible to replace the text instead of expanding it ? I’m developing a fixed height website. None of the jquery plugins seem to be capable of this
« Reply
philipbeel Reply:
March 2nd, 2010 at 8:49 am
@Miz, I’m afraid not, that feature would be out of the scope of the plugin. By all means you can try modifying the plugin to achieve this ends.
« Reply
April 24th, 2010
Heloo, great script indeed! But it’s not compatible with other scripts like ddacordion (jquery) or like icarousel (mootools), right? Please let me know your answer and maybe your help on this one. Thank You
« Reply
May 4th, 2010
Great plugin, cheers! One thing that I noticed was the line: $(‘.hide_’ + num).empty(); should probably be changed to $(‘.hide_’ + num).remove(); to prevent multiple elements being output every time someone opens and closes a description.
Ta!
« Reply
May 10th, 2010
Hey mate,
Sorry for my last message, now it’s ok and working perfectly. But I would need please (!) the original version of the script, because I don’t need that ‘intelligent truncation’.
It would be very nice to answer me, as it’s for a professional use.
Thank You
Yahel
« Reply
philipbeel Reply:
May 11th, 2010 at 8:49 am
@Yahel, Im afraid version 1 is no longer available, it was not cross browser compatible so was updated and removed from general release, however please feel free to modify the code from the latest download to use as per your request.
« Reply
Yahel Reply:
May 12th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
@philipbeel, Ok thank you for your answer. I hope you can answer to my next message which is my current master problem.
« Reply
May 10th, 2010
Or maybe to help me out on how not getting truncate after a space, inside an ‘a’ elements?
« Reply
June 5th, 2010
Hi, this is great and just what i was looking but i dont know how its possible to add in a sinlge.php file in wordpress?
Can you help please? Thanks!
« Reply
July 9th, 2010
Hi there,
I added on a tiny extra piece of functionality that made this plugin just a little better – JQuery UI effects.
1. At the var defaults declaration, add a new parameter “show: ”, ”
2. Find $(‘span.hiddenText_’+num).show() and add “defaults.show” in the () after .show
Now you can have transition effects for the click event:
.truncatable({ limit: 100, more: ‘… read more‘, less: false, show: ‘fast’ })
I also found you can happily chain on to the end of the function so that you can show other panels when the click occurs:
.truncatable({ limit: 100, more: ‘… read more‘, less: false, show: ‘fast’ }).click(function () {
$(this).parent().find(“div.comments”).show();
});
« Reply
philipbeel Reply:
July 9th, 2010 at 8:46 am
@Simon Miller, Thanks for sharing this, do you have a link to where you have implimented this code? It would be great to see!
« Reply
August 5th, 2010
this is great – but is there a way of it not expanding to show more – I’m using it in a div that is designed for a certain size.
Love it though – and keep on chopping!
« Reply
philipbeel Reply:
August 6th, 2010 at 8:43 am
@Phil, If you dont need to use the expansion aspect of this plugin I would highly recommend using a PHP function as this will be much quicker.
« Reply
November 3rd, 2010
Hi again,
I added this to a ‘news’ page a while back… Worked great. I’m now looking for something to add an intro sentence on a home page for SEO (click to read more, expand text)… But I noticed that this (and other show/hide plugins) all use display:none. I was just wondering what you meant by ‘SEO friendly’ as Google would ignore that hidden text? Just trying to figure out if I can do this without display:none.
Cheers though. And love the new site design. Haven’t been here in a while.
« Reply
philipbeel Reply:
November 3rd, 2010 at 11:32 am
@Paul Ashton, Good point on the display none issue, Thats not something I had considered. I suppose you could do something with overflow:hidden; if you knew the exact height of the content you want to truncate. I will have to play around with this on git when I get my code up there.
« Reply
December 30th, 2010
very nice script! works perfectly for me. thank you for your effort!
the only ‘problem’ i am having is that the “[read more]” (or whatever you might change it to) displays right after the aforeput text – while it would look much nicer with a space in between. i have worked around this by changing the tooltext to ” [read more]“, however, like this i have the space before the [] underlined (i.e. marked as a link) as well.
is there any elegant way to solve this?
i have used it on this work in progress: http://www.alexbrunner.com/blog.
cheers from austria
« Reply
alex Reply:
January 30th, 2011 at 12:49 pm
@alex,
i have now removed the truncatable plugin and solved the problem quite dufferently – but i would still be curious if there is an elegant way to solve this issue.
best
« Reply
December 30th, 2010
i should add that this is relevant for some (e.g. chrome) but not for all browsers. firefox e.g. does not underline spaces.
« Reply
January 10th, 2011
Hi,
I’m using your plugin, but there is still problem with scrolling the page to the top if I click on read more link. Can this be fixed, or is it fixed?
p.s. This is just the plugin I need, but the problem with jumping to the top of the page makes it useless to me.
Please help me with this problem,
Thanks
-Vito-
« Reply
January 10th, 2011
Nevermind, problem solved
« Reply
nadz Reply:
March 24th, 2011 at 2:39 am
@vito, ahh…. how’d you solve it??
« Reply
nadz Reply:
March 24th, 2011 at 2:54 am
@nadz, thanks anyway, here it is from above – https://gist.github.com/457245
« Reply
June 9th, 2011
Awesome.I got a site with plenty of content.Hope to use it for my site.Thanks for the share.
« Reply
June 11th, 2011
Nice article! Very good list of web designing. Saves us some work in trying to find them.
« Reply
July 19th, 2011
Hi guys,
This script is awesome and just what i needed but wanted something else than … after the text as it also comes underlined which i didnt want, so i replaced the … and [hide text] with images which is also just as nice, here is the script modified to show images however you need an expand image and a collapse image –
$(function () {
$(‘.text’).truncatable({ limit: 200, more: ”, less: true, hideText: ” });
});
Hope this helps as well and hope i havent caused any dramas with the developer re this
Cheeers
Geoff
« Reply
Geoff Reply:
July 19th, 2011 at 2:41 am
@Geoff,
Sorry guys the html took out the code will try again -
”
$(function () {
$(‘.text’).truncatable({ limit: 250, more: ”, less: true, hideText: ” });
});
“
« Reply
Geoff Reply:
July 19th, 2011 at 2:42 am
Bugger lol, ok am not having much luck here, email me at – danztroniclive@hotmail.com.au if you want the code, sorry guys
Cheers
Geoff
« Reply
September 20th, 2011
Hello! It was a really nice post, but one thing I would like to ask…When I click on “read more..”, it takes the page to the top no matter where i am in my page. What I want is that when I click “read more…”, it must not move any bit on top, Please tell me how to do that?
« Reply
Amit yadav Reply:
September 20th, 2011 at 1:20 pm
The problem is solved, i have to update the trunctable.js file.
« Reply
September 24th, 2011
I have tested the plugin and can confirm that it runs on the lastest version on jQuery(V1.3.2) and works on IE Safari and Firefox. Happy coding!
« Reply
October 4th, 2012
Hi,
I’ve download the plugin and notice that some variables are not used at all…just taking memory for nothing.
var splitText=$(this).html().substr(defaults.limit);
var splitPoint=splitText.substr(0,1);
to prevent the link just add(replace):
$(‘a.more_’+num).bind(‘click’,function(event){
event.preventDefault();
« Reply
October 4th, 2012
Hi,
I’ve download the plugin and notice that some variables are not used at all…just taking memory for nothing.
var splitText=$(this).html().substr(defaults.limit);
var splitPoint=splitText.substr(0,1);
to prevent the link just add(replace):
$(‘a.more_’+num).bind(‘click’,function(event){
event.preventDefault();
same here:
$(‘a.hide_’+num).bind(‘click’,function(event){
event.preventDefault();
This is for a first view
Benjamin
« Reply
May 2nd, 2013
After looking at a handful of the blog posts on your
site, I really like your technique of blogging. I book-marked it to
my bookmark website list and will be checking back soon.
Please check out my web site as well and tell me how you feel.
« Reply