Estimated Reading time for ACF Blocks

• pierrebalian

• June 6, 2023 at 4:53 pm

Hi. Im trying to create a function I can use in my theme to count the words in acf blocks of type text, textarea, and wysiwyg and return an estimated reading time. No matter what I try I just cant get it, and was hoping that someone that knows acf blocks a little better than me might have an idea what is going on.

My function:

function estimated_reading_time($post_id) {
	// Get the post content
	$content = get_post_field('post_content', $post_id);

	// If the post content is empty, return 0
	if (empty($content)) {
		return 0;
	}

	// Get the ACF Gutenberg blocks for the post
	$blocks = parse_blocks($content);

	// Debug: Output the blocks for debugging
	var_dump($blocks);

	// Initialize the word count
	$word_count = 0;

	// Loop through the blocks
	foreach ($blocks as $block) {
		// Debug: Output the current block for debugging
		var_dump($block);

		// Check if the block is a valid ACF Gutenberg block
		if (isset($block['blockName']) && strpos($block['blockName'], 'acf/') === 0 && isset($block['attrs']['data']['block']['value'])) {
			$block_fields = $block['attrs']['data']['block']['value'];

			// Loop through the fields within the block
			foreach ($block_fields as $field) {
				if (isset($field['field_type']) && isset($field['value'])) {
					$field_type = $field['field_type'];

					// Check if the field is a text, textarea, or wysiwyg field
					if (in_array($field_type, ['text', 'textarea', 'wysiwyg'])) {
						$field_value = $field['value'];

						// Count the number of words in the field value
						$field_word_count = str_word_count(strip_tags($field_value));

						// Add the field's word count to the total word count
						$word_count += $field_word_count;
					}
				}
			}
		}
	}

	// Debug: Output the final word count for debugging
	var_dump($word_count);

	// Calculate the estimated reading time based on average reading speed (200 words per minute)
	$reading_time = round($word_count / 200);

	return $reading_time;
}

Then to use it in my template file I just do
Reading Time: <?php echo estimated_reading_time( $postid ); ?>

(and obviously pass that postid into the function).

I stuck var dumps into the relevant bits to get some debugging info. But im still stuck. Any ideas what I am doing wrong?