Truncating article text

Question

I need to show article's content based on this logic:

• if article's content has to be truncated (e.g for preview)
  • if there's [read more] substring in the content
    • replace first [read more] with link to the article
    • truncate content to the first occurence of [read more]
  • else
    • truncate content to the first 500 characters
• remove all [read more] from content.

I've written a presenter for this, how can it be refactored? (_h gives access to the helpers) This is just one of the responsibilities that this presenter has, there are already a few methods (public & private), so... should I extract it into a helper?

class ArticlePresenter
  # ... omitted
  DEFAULT_LENGTH  = 500
  READ_MORE_REGEX = /\[read more\]/i

  def content(truncate)
    content = article.content
    if truncate
     index = content.index(READ_MORE_REGEX)
     if index
       url = _h.article_url(article)
       content = _h.truncate(content, length: index, omission: " [Show more](#{url})")
     else
       content = _h.truncate(content, length: DEFAULT_LENGTH)
     end
   end

   content.gsub!(READ_MORE_REGEX, '')

   html = MarkdownService.instance.render content
   content_tag :div, html
 end

Answer 1

About the naming, and grouping your code.

First improvement, change name of the variable from truncate to should_truncate, than you get

if should_truncate

instead of

if truncate

It is suggested to use methods to encapsulate code that is inside a block, for example code that is execute inside if statement, loops, or any other block of code. In your case

  def content(should_truncate)
    content = article.content
     if should_truncate
       content = truncate_article_content
     end
     content.gsub!(READ_MORE_REGEX, '')

     html = MarkdownService.instance.render content
     content_tag :div, html
  end

private

  def truncate_article_content
    index_at = article.content.index(READ_MORE_REGEX)
    if index_at
      truncate_length index_at
    else
      first_characters
    end
  end

  def truncate_length(length)
    url = _h.article_url(article)
    _h.truncate(article.content, length: length, omission: " [Show more](#{url})")
  end

  def first_characters(length= DEFAULT_LENGTH)
    _h.truncate(article.content, length: length)
  end