Truncate Long Text Cleanly with Str::words() and Str::limit()

Use Str::words() to truncate text by word count and Str::limit() to truncate by character length with customizable ellipses.

When rendering blog card excerpts, search result snippets, or notification previews, cutting text with raw substr() cuts words in half.

Laravel provides word-aware and character-aware truncation helpers.

Truncating by Word Count with Str::words()

use Illuminate\Support\Str;

$body = "Laravel is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax.";

// Truncate to 5 words
echo Str::words($body, 5, '...');
// Output: "Laravel is a web application..."

Truncating by Character Count with Str::limit()

$title = "A Comprehensive Guide to Modern Eloquent Query Optimization in Laravel";

// Truncate to 40 characters without breaking words
echo Str::limit($title, 40, ' (read more)');
// Output: "A Comprehensive Guide to Modern Eloquent (read more)"

In Blade Templates

<p class="summary">
    {{ str($post->body)->words(25) }}
</p>

Summary

• Str::words($string, $count, $end) preserves complete words when truncating.
• Str::limit($string, $length, $end) truncates by character length.
• Appends customizable ellipsis markers (default: ...).