Ellipsis (abbreviate text) with JSP / EL

Question

I was wondering what is the best way to implement an ellipsis abbreviation with JSP / Expression Language.

For now, I've been using fn:substring, which is ok, but I would like to have the three dots "...", in case the text was truncated.

With a web search I found that Java Web Parts has an AbbreviateTag. However I was wondering if there are better libraries, or if it's better I roll my own custom tag. What do you suggest?

Syl

Wouldn't it be better to do this with CSS? – Ocrea

It seems that text-overflow:ellipsis doesn't work in Firefox, or do you know another way? – Syl

ah, you appear to be right - there do seem to be hacks and a jQuery plugin, but that is less than ideal. – Ocrea

Answer 1

Since I couldn't understand how to use mmbase, I built my own custom tag extending SimpleTagSupport.

It works in this way:

<%@ taglib prefix="sti" uri="/WEB-INF/tlds/stivlo.tld" %> 
<p><sti:ellipsis>What a beautiful day.</sti:ellipsis></p>
<p><sti:ellipsis maxLength="10">What a beautiful day.</sti:ellipsis></p>

Output:

What a beautiful day.
What a bea…

I've also documented the custom tag implementation on my blog. This is my first custom tag, if anything can be done better, I'd be happy to hear from you.

Syl

I am accepting my own answer, because I could not get mmbase to work. – Syl

Answer 2

The MMBase tag library has a tag that supports ellipsis.

However, implementing your own could be a good option ... depending on exactly how you expect the ellipsis to work.

Sextain

I tried using mmbase, I've put mmbase-1.9.5.jar (the latest release) inside my WEB-INF/lib directory, but I've the error: "Can not find the tag library descriptor". I've also tried to add it to eclipse build path. I tried with uri "mmbase.org/mmbase-taglib-2.0" and -1.0. I guess I will try to implement my own for now. – Syl

Answer 3

Old thread, but I am posting this for anyone searching for an answer. Below is how I handled this. The code was inside a loop creating td elements, hence the reference to columns. If the text needs truncation I adjusted the substring allowing room for the ellipsis and then appended the ellipsis.

<c:if test="${columnMaxLength ge 0}">      
  <c:set value="" var="ellipsis" />           
  <c:if test="${fn:length(colTxt) gt columnMaxLength}">     
    <c:set value="..." var="ellipsis" />    
  </c:if>
  <c:set value="${fn:substring(colTxt, 0, (columnMaxLength - fn:length(ellipsis)))}${ellipsis}" var="colTxt" />
</c:if>
<c:out value="${colTxt}" />

Crawfish