Trim text in WP (php)

Question

I am new to php and trying to trim the lines of text generated by the ('information') part of the code seen below (in my custom WP theme):

<div class="information"><?php echo get_post_meta(get_the_ID(),'information',true); ?></div>

Each post has a different lenght of it's information (basically like a excerpt, but pulled from a custom field in each post) text, which messes up my archive/blog page, as i use a 3 columns grid. I need the lenght of all posts seen on the archive page to be equally long, by restricting the "information" text to be no more than lets say 150 characters long.

I see the fenction in this piece of code for example, taken from a default WP file, but can't seem to wrap it around my own piece of code seen above, to make it work like i want it to:

<?php
et_divi_post_meta();

if ( 'on' !== et_get_option( 'divi_blog_style', 'false' ) || ( is_search() && ( 'on' === get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), '_et_pb_use_builder', true ) ) ) ) {
    truncate_post( 270 );
} else {
    the_content();
}
?>

This is what i want/talk about:

Before:

POST 1 I am a wordpress post, with a long text, that should not be so long, as it makes the 3 column setup of the archive page look stupid.

After:

POST 1 I am a wordpress post, with a long text, that should not be so long...

How do i do this?

Thanks!

`I am a wordpress post, with a long text, that should not be so long, as it makes the 3 column setup of the archive page look stupid.` is only 132 characters. Something like `mb_substr($content, 1, 150) . '...'` is probably your answer with `mb_strlen($content) > 150 ? ` — user3783243, Mar 05 '19 at 17:04
Just FYI, you probably had a hard time finding this answer on google because you were searching for "trim" but generally speaking people refer to this as "truncating" a string, not trimming, trimming is generally implied to remove whitespace from a string — Zachary Craig, Mar 05 '19 at 17:04
Hi zack. Thanks. But i actually started out by using the word truncate, which made people ask what i meant, as that was notmally used to achieve other things in php. See one of the answers below, to give you an idea: "What do you mean by "truncate"? Truncate means to cut off the rest of some string. php probably has a LEFT method to take the LEFT most characters if that is what you want." — emiliano85, Mar 05 '19 at 17:06

Vidal · Accepted Answer · 2019-03-05T17:10:55.477

0

You can use substr() php function to get part of the string.

Take a look at this example function.

function trimResult($string, $len = 150){

    if(strlen($string)> $len){
        $string = substr($string,0,$len) . "..."; // to let the user know that was truncated...
    }

    return $string;
}

ref: http://php.net/substr

Specific code example, will be a better solution to include the php function on a global file.

<?php
function trimResult($string, $len = 150){

    if(strlen($string)> $len){
        $string = substr($string,0,$len) . "..."; // to let the user know that was truncated...
    }

    return $string;
}
?>

<div class="information"><?php echo trimResult(get_post_meta(get_the_ID(),'information',true)); ?></div>

Hope it helps.

edited Mar 05 '19 at 17:10

answered Mar 05 '19 at 16:58

Vidal

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You might like to check that. Bit of an error, or 2, there – RiggsFolly Mar 05 '19 at 16:59
Crashes my page. Won't load. – emiliano85 Mar 05 '19 at 17:01
Thanks, but where do i put my own piece of code? As far as i see, the code you posted doesn't point to the 'information' text in my posts? – emiliano85 Mar 05 '19 at 17:04
my friend, you paste the function an use it in your php code, where you need to truncate the string, ej . trimResult(get_post_meta(get_the_ID(),'information',true)); – Vidal Mar 05 '19 at 17:08

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 05 '19 at 17:15

$post = "I am a wordpress post, with a long text, that should not be so long, as it makes the 3 column setup of the archive page look stupid.";

$post = mb_strimwidth($post, 0, 70, "...");

echo $post;

result: "I am a wordpress post, with a long text, that should not be so long..."

Add ... if string is too long PHP

Trim text in WP (php)

2 Answers2