A Laravel Nova field that shortens long text and reveals the rest on click. It truncates on the index and detail views (on a word boundary), and renders a normal textarea on create / update forms.

Nova compatibility

Package version	Nova	PHP
^2.2	4.x & 5.x	^8.0
^2.0	4.x	^8.0
^1.0	1.x	>=7.1

On PHP 8.0 you get Nova 4; PHP 8.1+ resolves Nova 4 or 5. v2 is a rewrite for Nova 4+ and removes the Text::readMore() / Textarea::showOnIndex() macros in favour of a dedicated field. See UPGRADE.md.

composer require mattsplat/readmore

use Mattsplat\Readmore\ReadMore;

ReadMore::make('Notes'),

By default the field shows on the index (unlike Nova's Textarea). Chain the usual Nova methods to change that:

ReadMore::make('Notes')->hideFromIndex(),

ReadMore::make('Notes')
    ->characters(60)         // characters shown before truncating (default 20)
    ->mask('read more')      // the "reveal" indicator (default '...')
    ->lessLabel('collapse')  // the "collapse" control label (default 'Show less')
    ->rows(8),               // textarea rows on forms (default 5)

mask() accepts HTML, so you can use an icon instead of text:

$icon = '<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 24 24" width="16" height="16"><path d="M6 2h9a1 1 0 0 1 .7.3l4 4a1 1 0 0 1 .3.7v13a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H6a2 2 0 0 1-2-2V4c0-1.1.9-2 2-2z"/></svg>';

ReadMore::make('Notes')->characters(0)->mask($icon),

The reveal / collapse control is a real <button>: it is keyboard focusable, toggles with Enter / Space, and exposes aria-expanded.

The dist/ bundle is committed so the package works without a build step. To recompile it from resources/js, run the build inside a Nova application checkout (Nova's mix tooling is not on the public npm registry):

npm run nova:install
npm run prod

The bundle externalises Vue and LaravelNova, so it is a small (~4 KB) file that relies on Nova's own runtime.

composer install   # needs Nova credentials (see below)
composer test      # PHPUnit
composer lint      # Pint (code style)
composer analyse   # PHPStan / Larastan

composer install pulls laravel/nova, so you need Nova credentials configured:

composer config --auth http-basic.nova.laravel.com "you@example.com" "your-license-key"

composer lint (Pint) needs no license and runs in CI on every push. The test / analyse suite needs Nova, so it runs locally or on demand via the tests workflow (Actions tab) once NOVA_USERNAME / NOVA_LICENSE_KEY secrets are set.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for more.

Inspired by Index TextArea by Brian Dillingham.