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?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.