use-clamp-text

react hook to clamp multiline text to a given height in a responsive way and with extreme flexibility (under 2.5kb)

Line Clampin’ (Truncating Multiple Line Text) is a major hassle still for most browsers.

This tiny react hook eases that pain.

Why hook?

Cause it gives extreme flexibility over how you want to control the text. Do you want truncate it or not? When to truncate it? How to show read more interactions? and more...

Usage

Basic Example

import { useClampText } from 'use-clamp-text';

const longText = "Spicy jalapeno bacon ipsum dolor amet drumstick sirloin chuck shankle. Flank ribeye pancetta andouille ham hock. Turkey cow tenderloin landjaeger filet mignon hamburger. Pig tail strip steak pastrami t-bone venison bresaola biltong corned beef drumstick pork hamburger tri-tip. Tongue ham hock corned beef tri-tip meatball t-bone fatback andouille sirloin chuck jowl biltong pastrami. Ham hock ground round landjaeger tail strip steak. Ham sirloin pork loin salami spare ribs. Jerky cow short ribs ground round. Hamburger porchetta shankle meatloaf shank.";

function ClampedText {
const [ref, { noClamp, clampedText }] = useClampText({
  text: longText,
});

  return (
    <section>
      <h1>
        {noClamp ? 'Not truncated' : 'Truncated'}
      </h1>
      <div ref={ref}>
        {clampedText}
      </div>
    </section>
  );
}

Advanced Example

Check out the codesandbox example

API Reference

Arguments

The hook accepts only a single object argument is accepted with the following properties:

property	type	required	default	description
text	string	true		Text you wish to clamp
ellipsis	string | number	false	'…'	String displayed after the clamped text or number of characters to be trimmed off the string (useful for adding inline custom ellipsis like a <a> or <button>)
expanded	boolean	false	false	To control whether the string should be truncated or not
lines	number	false	3	Number of visible lines
debounce	number	false	300	Time in milliseconds used for debounce
charWidth	number	false	1.2	Character width to be assumed for calculating clamped string length (an average depending on your font size should work well enough)

Return

The hook returns a tuple -

• [0] (first element) - React.MutableRefObject<HTMLElement | null> - a ref to attach to the element where the clamped text will be rendered
• [1] (second element) - Object - The properties of the object are documented in the table below

property	type	description
noClamp	boolean	Whether the text is clamped or not. Will return true if not clamped
clampedText	string	The string to be rendered
key	string	A key to attach to the element that contains the string to be rendered (only needed when using custom inline ellipsis)

Prior Art (packages I copied adapted code from)

• react-clamp-lines
• nanoclamp