Adding 'Read More' link in Laravel 4 - laravel-4

Question

I have trying to excerpt some text and add Read More link. So far I was able to cut the text and add Read More but now I can to make few lines between text and read more link.
Here is how I truncated the text
{{ str_limit($product['description_small'], $limit = 250, $end = ' Read More') }}
How can I put this $end = ' Read More' few lines under the text and to make it link?
Laravel 4 + blade template

Answer 1

The best thing you can do is create your own function to create the excerpt and add the Read More link.
First of all in your composer.json file, in the autolaod section add a files array:
{
"autoload": {
"files": [
"app/helpers.php"
]
}
}
Now in your app/ folder create the helpers.php file.
Then add in app\start\global.php: ( NB: this is required only for Laravel 4 )
// at the bottom of the file
require app_path().'/helpers.php';
Then:
composer dump-autoload
In this way Laravel will load the file for you.
Now in this file you can create your onw function to manage the excerpt:
<?php
if( ! function_exists('createExcerptAndLink')){
function createExcerptAndLink($text, $limit, $url, $readMoreText = 'Read More') {
$end = "<br><br>$readMoreText";
return str_limit($text, $limit, $end);
}
}
Now in every view you can use your new helper:
{{ createExcerptAndLink($product['description_small'], 250, "http://www.google.it", 'Read more here.') }}