HTML-safe truncate

Hello list,

Currently, I'm running a RoR website with a separate installation of Wordpress (PHP), integrated into this website. I want to post summaries of the posts in my RoR homepage, using truncate to display the content. However, WordPress stores the full HTML-enriched content in the table (so <a href="etc">foo</a> is directly in the table). If I truncate() that text in my RoR view, I can't be sure all HTML is preserved, and all tags are closed (eg. <a href="...).

Is there any way to resolve this problem? Maybe a HTML-tag-sentient truncate out there? Googled to no avail...

thanks a bunch, bartz