Christian Kaula. Let the computer do it.

Need to shorten your URLs like Google does? Something like http://example.com/some/really/long/path/ to http://example.com/.../path/? Here's my simplistic approach:

# -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

from django import template
from django.utils.html import conditional_escape
from django.utils.safestring import mark_safe
import re


register = template.Library()


@register.filter
def fancyurlize(value, arg):
  length = int(arg)

  text = value
  for char in (u'%', u'?'):
    arr = value.split(char)
    if len(arr) > 1:
      text = arr[0]

  if len(text) > length:
    arr = re.split(r'(?<!/)/(?!/)', text)
    if len(arr) > 2:
      text = u'/'.join((arr[0], u'...', arr[-1]))

  if len(text) > 0 and text[-1] != u'/':
    text = u''.join((text, u'/'))

  return_value = u'<a href="%s" target="_blank">%s</a>' % (
    conditional_escape(value),
    conditional_escape(text),
  )
  return mark_safe(return_value)

fancyurlize.is_safe = True