Solving 140 characters Twitter status limit with PHP regex - php

Question

So, my text I want to post on Twitter is sometimes more than 140 character, so, I need to check the lenght and then go without changes if less than 140 or slive the text into two pieces (the text and the link) and grab the text part and make it e.g. 100 characters long - chop the rest.
Then grab the - now 100 characters long part - and put it otgether with the url.
How to do that?
my code so far:
if (strlen($status) < 140) {
// continue
} else {
// 1. slice the $status into $text and $url (every message has url so
// checking is not important right now
// 2. shorten the text to 100 char
// something like $text = substr($text, 0, 100); ?
// 3. put them back together
$status = $text . ' ' . $url;
}
How should I change my code? I have biggest problem with the first part when getting the url and text part.
Btw. in each $status is only 1 url, so checking for mulitple urls is not necessary
Example of a text that is longer than it should be:
What is now Ecuador was home to a variety of indigenous groups that were gradually incorporated into the Inca Empire during the fifteenth century. The territory was colonized by Spain during the sixteenth century, achieving independence in 1820 as part of Gran Colombia, from which it emerged as its own sovereign state in 1830. The legacy of both empires is reflected in Ecuador's ethnically diverse population, with most of its 15.2 million people being mestizos, followed by large minorities of European, Amerindian, and African descendant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecuador
should become in the end this:
What is now Ecuador was home to a variety of indigenous groups that were gradually incorporated int https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecuador

Answer 1

If you can be sure that the URL does not contain any spaces (no well-formed URL should) and that it is always present, try it like that:
preg_match('/^(.*)(\\S+)$/', $status, $matches);
$text = $matches[1];
$url = $matches[2];
$text = substr($text, 0, 100);
But possibly the length of the text should be adapted to the length of the url, so you would use
$text = substr($text, 0, 140-strlen($url)-1);

Answer 2

$reg = '/\b(?:(?:https?|ftp|file):\/\/|www\.|ftp\.)[-A-Z0-9+&##\/%=~_|$?!:,.]*[A-Z0-9+&##\/%=~_|$]/i';
$string = "What is now Ecuador was home to a variety of indigenous groups that were gradually incorporated into the Inca Empire during the fifteenth century. The territory was colonized by Spain during the sixteenth century, achieving independence in 1820 as part of Gran Colombia, from which it emerged as its own sovereign state in 1830. The legacy of both empires is reflected in Ecuador's ethnically diverse population, with most of its 15.2 million people being mestizos, followed by large minorities of European, Amerindian, and African descendant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecuador";
preg_match_all($reg, $string, $matches, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
$cut_string = substr($string, 0, (140-strlen($matches[0][0])-1));
$your_twitt = $cut_string . " " . $matches[0][0];
echo $your_twitt;
// ouputs : "What is now Ecuador was home to a variety of indigenous groups that were gradually incorporated into t https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecuador"

Answer 3

This might be what you want :
$status = 'What is now Ecuador was home to a variety of indigenous groups that were gradually incorporated into the Inca Empire during the fifteenth century. The territory was colonized by Spain during the sixteenth century, achieving independence in 1820 as part of Gran Colombia, from which it emerged as its own sovereign state in 1830. The legacy of both empires is reflected in Ecuador\'s ethnically diverse population, with most of its 15.2 million people being mestizos, followed by large minorities of European, Amerindian, and African descendant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecuador';
if (strlen($status) < 140) {
echo 'Lenght ok';
} else {
$totalPart = round(strlen($status)/100);
$fulltweet = array();
for ($i=0; $i < $totalPart; $i++) {
if($i==0)
{
$fulltweet[$i] = substr($status, 0,100);
}else{
$fulltweet[$i] = substr($status, $i * 100);
}
}
}
If the string is longer than 140 chars then it'll explode it in an array of 100 char for each row