php - wordwrap with html

Question

The problem is simple:

Using tinyMCE, I am storing html data into the database. Then at the home page, I am showing 5 latest posts I've inserted into the database. I want to crop each of these posts to the specified length if they exceed it and put a continue reading link (can be a soft crop here, doesn't have to be rigid).

It would be easy to crop the string with php's wordwrap function but since the string is composed of html I don't wanna ruin the html code by cropping it from a wrong place.

So the question is: Is there an easy way to crop this, (can be a css, javascript solution as well) or do I have a write a long function with lots of checks to implement such a basic feature? I was thinking to use the DOM class but before creating function I just wanted to ask you guys.

EDIT

Styling is essential to me. So there is no possibility to strip the tags.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

One possible solution could be to strip tags, if the styling of this HTML is not vital, so you can cut wherever you want: http://php.net/manual/es/function.strip-tags.php

Another solution for CSS3 browsers, would be to use text-overflow, read more about this: http://davidwalsh.name/css-ellipsis