Typography Class

The Typography Class provides methods that help you format text.

Using the Typography Class

Initializing the Class

Like most other classes in CodeIgniter, the Typography class is initialized in your controller using the $this->load->library() method:

$this->load->library('typography');

Once loaded, the Typography library object will be available using:

$this->typography

Class Reference

class CI_Typography
$protect_braced_quotes = FALSE

When using the Typography library in conjunction with the Template Parser library it can often be desirable to protect single and double quotes within curly braces. To enable this, set the protect_braced_quotes class property to TRUE.

Usage example:

$this->load->library('typography');
$this->typography->protect_braced_quotes = TRUE;
auto_typography($str[, $reduce_linebreaks = FALSE])
Parameters:
  • $str (string) – Input string
  • $reduce_linebreaks (bool) – Whether to reduce consecutive linebreaks
Returns:

HTML typography-safe string
Return type:

string

Formats text so that it is semantically and typographically correct HTML. Takes a string as input and returns it with the following formatting:

  • Surrounds paragraphs within <p></p> (looks for double line breaks to identify paragraphs).
  • Single line breaks are converted to <br />, except those that appear within <pre> tags.
  • Block level elements, like <div> tags, are not wrapped within paragraphs, but their contained text is if it contains paragraphs.
  • Quotes are converted to correctly facing curly quote entities, except those that appear within tags.
  • Apostrophes are converted to curly apostrophe entities.
  • Double dashes (either like – this or like–this) are converted to em—dashes.
  • Three consecutive periods either preceding or following a word are converted to ellipsis (…).
  • Double spaces following sentences are converted to non-breaking spaces to mimic double spacing.

Usage example:

$string = $this->typography->auto_typography($string);

There is one optional parameter that determines whether the parser should reduce more than two consecutive line breaks down to two. Pass boolean TRUE to enable reducing line breaks:

$string = $this->typography->auto_typography($string, TRUE);

Note

Typographic formatting can be processor intensive, particularly if you have a lot of content being formatted. If you choose to use this method you may want to consider caching your pages.

format_characters($str)
Parameters:
  • $str (string) – Input string
Returns:

Formatted string
Return type:

string

This method is similar to auto_typography() above, except that it only does character conversion:

  • Quotes are converted to correctly facing curly quote entities, except those that appear within tags.
  • Apostrophes are converted to curly apostrophe entities.
  • Double dashes (either like – this or like–this) are converted to em—dashes.
  • Three consecutive periods either preceding or following a word are converted to ellipsis (…).
  • Double spaces following sentences are converted to non-breaking spaces to mimic double spacing.

Usage example:

$string = $this->typography->format_characters($string);
nl2br_except_pre($str)
Parameters:
  • $str (string) – Input string
Returns:

Formatted string
Return type:

string

Converts newlines to <br /> tags unless they appear within <pre> tags. This method is identical to the native PHP nl2br() function, except that it ignores <pre> tags.

Usage example:

$string = $this->typography->nl2br_except_pre($string);