Rails truncate helper with link as omit text

Question

I'm quite long description that I want to truncate using truncate helper. So i'm using the:

truncate article.description, :length => 200, :omission => ' ...'

The problem is that I want to use more as a clickable link so in theory I could use this:

truncate article.description, :length => 200, :omission => "... #{link_to('[more]', articles_path(article)}"

Omission text is handled as unsafe so it's escaped. I tried to make it html_safe but it didn't work, instead of link [more] my browser is still showing the html for that link.

Is there any way to force truncate to print omission link instead of omission text?

possible duplicate of [Make omission in ruby truncate a link](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4964073/make-omission-in-ruby-truncate-a-link) — Simone Carletti, Feb 17 '11 at 20:14

score 11 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 10 '14 at 22:49

11

With Rails 4, you can/should pass in a block for the link:

truncate("Once upon a time in a world far far away", 
  length: 10, 
  separator: ' ', 
  omission: '... ') {     
    link_to "Read more", "#" 
}

answered Nov 10 '14 at 22:49

Adam Rubin

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This is what did it for me. Thank you! – iamse7en Sep 29 '15 at 04:00

score 11 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 17 '14 at 06:54

11

I would suggest doing this on your own in a helper method, that way you'll have a little more control over the output as well:

def article_description article
  output = h truncate(article.description, length: 200, omission: '...')
  output += link_to('[more]', article_path(article)) if article.description.size > 200
  output.html_safe
end

edited Mar 17 '14 at 06:54

Patrick

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answered Feb 17 '11 at 19:44

Pan Thomakos

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@Pam-Thomakos This works great exept for one problem. When I click on the link it goes to posts.1 instead of post/1. – Antarr Byrd Dec 12 '11 at 15:59
It should be singular `article_path` instead of the plural `articles_path` – Patrick Mar 17 '14 at 06:43
What does the `h` before truncate do? – Patrick Mar 17 '14 at 07:14

andrea · Answer 3 · 2011-02-17T20:10:50.250

7

Dirty solution... use the method "raw" to unescape it.
you have to be sure of "sanity" of your content.

raw(truncate article.description, :length => 200, :omission => "... #{link_to('[more]', articles_path(article)}")

raw is a helper acting like html_safe .
bye

edit: is not the omission of being escaped , but the result of truncate method.

edited Feb 17 '11 at 20:10

answered Feb 17 '11 at 20:04

andrea

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1

The problem is that i cannot be sure of the sanity of article.description – Jakub Troszok Feb 17 '11 at 22:38

score 4 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 20 '12 at 20:33

4

I encountered a similar situation and this did the trick. Try (line breaks for readability):

(truncate h(article.description), 
                  :length => 200, 
                  :omission => "... #{link_to('[more]',articles_path(article)}")
                  .html_safe

You can use h to ensure sanity of article description, and since you are setting the link_to to a path you know to not be something potentially nefarious, you can mark the resulting string as html_safe without concern.

answered Nov 20 '12 at 20:33

saneshark

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You'll need to be careful to pass in `escape: false`, at least as of Rails 4.0.1, since [`TextHelper#truncate` will add its own escaping](https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/58ab79ff9b34c22c3477e29763fdd4f4612e938d/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb#L92) to the concatenation of `h(article.description)` and the `omission` text. No amount of `.html_safe` will prevent it. – Adam Prescott Nov 25 '13 at 19:04

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 25 '13 at 19:32

TextHelper#truncate has a block form of truncate, which lets you use a link_to that isn't escaped, while still escaping the truncated text:

truncate("<script>alert('hello world')</script>") { link_to "Read More", "#" }

#=> &lt;script&gt;alert(&#39;hello world&#39;...<a href="#">Read More</a>

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 10 '14 at 20:03

1

The only one that worked for me :

<%= truncate(@article.content, length: 200, omission: " ... %s") % link_to('read more', article_path(@article)) %>

answered Mar 10 '14 at 20:03

Noémien Kocher

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score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 30 '17 at 23:54

I had the same problem, in my case i just used :escape => false. That worked:

truncate article.description, :length => 200, :omission => "... #{link_to('[more]', articles_path(article)}", :escape => false

From documentation :

The result is marked as HTML-safe, but it is escaped by default, unless :escape is false.... link: http://apidock.com/rails/ActionView/Helpers/TextHelper/truncate

Rails truncate helper with link as omit text

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