Estimated Reading Time for Blog Posts, Articles, etc.

A simple implementation of Medium's Read Time calculation.

Examples (TL;DR)

import net.thauvin.erik.readingtime.ReadingTime

// ...

val rt = ReadingTime(htmlText)
println(rt.calcEstimatedReadTime()) // eg: 2 min read

• View bld or Gradle Examples

To get the estimated reading time in seconds use the calcReadingTimeInSec() function.

bld

To use with bld, include the following dependency in your build file:

repositories = List.of(MAVEN_CENTRAL);

scope(compile)
    .include(dependency("net.thauvin.erik:readingtime:0.9.2"));

Be sure to use the bld Kotlin extension in your project.

Gradle, Maven, etc.

To use with Gradle, include the following dependency in your build file:

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
    implementation("net.thauvin.erik:readingtime:0.9.2")
}

Instructions for using with Maven, Ivy, etc. can be found on Maven Central.

Properties

The following properties are available:

ReadingTime(
    text,
    wpm = 275,
    postfix = "min read",
    plural = "min read",
    excludeImages = false, 
    extra = 0,
    roundingMode = RoundingMode.HALF_EVEN
)

Property	Description
text	The text to be evaluated. (Required)
wpm	The words per minute reading average.
postfix	The value to be appended to the reading time.
plural	The value to be appended if the reading time is more than 1 minute.
excludeImages	Images are excluded from the reading time when set.
extra	Additional seconds to be added to the total reading time.
roundingMode	The rounding mode to apply.

Functions

A couple of useful functions are also available:

ReadingTime.wordCount(htmlText) // Returns the count of words. (HTML stripped)
ReadingTime.imgCount(htmlText) // Returns the count of images. (HTML img tags)

JSP

A JSP tag is also available for easy incorporation into web applications:

<%@taglib uri="https://erik.thauvin.net/taglibs/readingtime" prefix="t"%>
<t:readingtime
    wpm="275"
    postfix="min read"
    plural="min read"
    excludeImages="false"
    extra="0">some_text</t:readingtime>

None of the attributes are required.

Java

In addition to setters, a configuration builder is also available:

final ReadingTime rt = new ReadingTime(text);
rt.setPostfix("minute to read");
rt.setPlural("minutes to read");

or

final Config config =
        new Config.Builder(text)
                .postfix("minute to read")
                .plural("minutes to read")
                .build();
final ReadingTime rt = new ReadingTime(config);

Contributing

If you want to contribute to this project, all you have to do is clone the GitHub repository:

git clone git@github.com:ethauvin/readingtime.git

Then use bld to build:

cd readingtime
./bld compile

The project has an IntelliJ IDEA project structure. You can just open it after all the dependencies were downloaded and peruse the code.