PHP - Truncating

I have a full-text RSS component for Joomla that I was trying to modify. I wanted to be able to truncate the article to a given number of words and place a link at the end for the rest of the article. I need help figuring out how to add a link to the end of the source article.

Added this script to the post.php file. It sort of works but the "$ending" tag doesn't seem to function since there is no "..." appended to the end of articles posted, when I tested it.
public function truncate($text, $length = 200, $ending = '...', $exact = true, $considerHtml = false) {
if ($considerHtml) {
// if the plain text is shorter than the maximum length, return the whole text
if (str_word_count(preg_replace('/<.*?>/', '', $text)) <= $length) {
return $text;
}
// splits all html-tags to scanable lines
preg_match_all('/(<.+?>)?([^<>]*)/s', $text, $lines, PREG_SET_ORDER);
$total_length = str_word_count($ending);
$open_tags = array();
$truncate = '';
foreach ($lines as $line_matchings) {
// if there is any html-tag in this line, handle it and add it (uncounted) to the output
if (!empty($line_matchings[1])) {
// if it's an "empty element" with or without xhtml-conform closing slash (f.e. <br/>)
if (preg_match('/^<(\s*.+?\/\s*|\s*(img|br|input|hr|area|base|basefont|col|frame|isindex|link|meta|param)(\s.+?)?)>$/is', $line_matchings[1])) {
// do nothing
// if tag is a closing tag (f.e. </b>)
} else if (preg_match('/^<\s*\/([^\s]+?)\s*>$/s', $line_matchings[1], $tag_matchings)) {
// delete tag from $open_tags list
$pos = array_search($tag_matchings[1], $open_tags);
if ($pos !== false) {
unset($open_tags[$pos]);
}
// if tag is an opening tag (f.e. <b>)
} else if (preg_match('/^<\s*([^\s>!]+).*?>$/s', $line_matchings[1], $tag_matchings)) {
// add tag to the beginning of $open_tags list
array_unshift($open_tags, strtolower($tag_matchings[1]));
}
// add html-tag to $truncate'd text
$truncate .= $line_matchings[1];
}
// calculate the length of the plain text part of the line; handle entities as one character
$content_length = str_word_count(preg_replace('/&[0-9a-z]{2,8};|&#38;#[0-9]{1,7};|[0-9a-f]{1,6};/i', ' ', $line_matchings[2]));
if ($total_length+$content_length> $length) {
// the number of characters which are left
$left = $length - $total_length;
$entities_length = 0;
// search for html entities
if (preg_match_all('/&[0-9a-z]{2,8};|&#38;#[0-9]{1,7};|[0-9a-f]{1,6};/i', $line_matchings[2], $entities, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE)) {
// calculate the real length of all entities in the legal range
foreach ($entities[0] as $entity) {
if ($entity[1]+1-$entities_length <= $left) {
$left--;
$entities_length += str_word_count($entity[0]);
} else {
// no more characters left
break;
}
}
}
$truncate .= substr($line_matchings[2], 0, $left+$entities_length);
// maximum lenght is reached, so get off the loop
break;
} else {
$truncate .= $line_matchings[2];
$total_length += $content_length;
}
// if the maximum length is reached, get off the loop
if($total_length>= $length) {
break;
}
}
} else {
if (str_word_count($text) <= $length) {
return $text;
} else {
$truncate = substr($text, 0, $length - str_word_count($ending));
}
}
// if the words shouldn't be cut in the middle...
if (!$exact) {
// ...search the last occurance of a space...
$spacepos = strrpos($truncate, ' ');
if (isset($spacepos)) {
// ...and cut the text in this position
$truncate = substr($truncate, 0, $spacepos);
}
}
// add the defined ending to the text
$truncate .= $ending;
if($considerHtml) {
// close all unclosed html-tags
foreach ($open_tags as $tag) {
$truncate .= '</' . $tag . '>';
}
}
return $truncate;
}



I have attached the whole file as well if you want to see the rest.



This part of the script has the function that originally automatically added the link to the source article:

if($link_original==1){
if(strlen($ret->fullText))
$ret->fullText.="<p><a href='". $item->link."' target='_blank'>".$text_link_original."</a></p>";
else
$ret->introText.="<p><a href='". $item->link."' target='_blank'>".$text_link_original."</a></p>";
}

The problem is that it gets truncated with the rest of the article now.