How can I truncate a string using MVC Html Helpers?

Question

I am trying to truncate a long string for display only on my index page. It is shown like so:

<td>
    @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Description)
</td>

The Description can be 500 characters long but I can't show that much on that grid layout. I'd like to show just the first 25 as they can see all of it on the Details page but I cannot seem to get it to work with out truncating it at the model level.

Something like this would be nice:

@Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Description.Take(25))
@Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Description.Substring(0,25)

EDIT

I'm getting the following exception at Runtime when I try either method.

Templates can be used only with field access, property access, single-dimension array index, or single-parameter custom indexer expressions.

Answer 1

Don't use the html helper. Just do this:

@item.Description.Substring(0, Math.Min(item.Description.Length, 25));

I'm assuming you are in some loop where item is the current element.

Answer 2

You could do this with an extension method.

public static string Truncate(this string source, int length)
{
    if (source.Length > length)
    {
        source = source.Substring(0, length);
    }

    return source;
}

Then in your view:

@item.Description.Truncate(25)