Hello,
I have a text area field on a custom post type called ‘news.’ In my template file, I’m pulling the title, the date, and some other data from the post and displaying it. The problem comes when I try to shorten the content of the post to a more manageable size. I could force a restriction in ACF when they input the text, but I need it all for the full post. Here’s what I’ve got right now:
<?php
$args = array(
'posts_per_page' => 1,
'post_type' => 'news'
);
// get results
$the_query = new WP_Query( $args );
// The Loop
?>
<div>
<?php while ( $the_query->have_posts() ) : $the_query->the_post(); ?>
<?php $url = get_field('external_link');?>
<?php if( $url ): ?>
<h4>
<a href="<?php echo $url ?>">
<?php the_title(); ?>
</a>
</h4>
<?php else: ?>
<h4>
<?php the_title(); ?>
</h4>
<?php endif; ?>
<p style="font-size:14;font-weight:300;">
<?php
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('Ymd', get_field('date'));
echo $date->format('m-d-Y');
?>,
<?php the_field('pub_name'); ?>
</p><small>
<?php
$descr = the_field('description');
$descr = strip_tags($descr);
echo substr($descr, 0, 135); // pull only x amount of characters from the content
?>… </small>
<?php endwhile; ?>
</div>
<?php wp_reset_query(); // Restore global post data stomped by the_post(). ?>
The title is working, the date is working, and the pub_name is working. If I pull the ‘description’ field (starting with the $descr = the_field(‘description’) line), I cannot shorten it at all. The code above just outputs the entire thing, not the first 135 characters as I specified.
The only thing I could think of is that if I echo the data type of the $descr variable, it comes out as ‘NULL’. I converted it to a string as a test, and that didn’t do any good. I’ve been wrestling with this for a couple of hours now and for the life of me, I can’t get the description to come out shorter than the full length. I searched the forums and found someone else using substr() and saying that it worked… I’m out of ideas.
Thank you in advance
