Trimming words from a field

• hektorperez

• October 22, 2021 at 8:16 am

Please help!
I am not anywhere a good coder, but I have found a function to place in my functions.php file to be able to trim a certain amount of words from a custom field. The function is:

function project_excerpt() {
global $post;
$text = get_field(“Objetivos”);
if ( ” != $text ) {
$text = strip_shortcodes( $text );
$text = str_replace(‘]]>’, ‘]]>>’, $text);
$text_length = strlen($text); // Get text length (characters)
$excerpt_length = 50; // 50 desired characters
$excerpt_more = ‘…’;

// Shorten the text
$text = substr($text, 0, $excerpt_length);

// If the text is more than 50 characters, append $excerpt_more
if ($text_length > $excerpt_length) {
$text .= $excerpt_more;
}

}
return apply_filters(‘the_excerpt’, $text);
}

And I understand I have to call it from my template.php file like this:

<?php echo project_excerpt(); ?>

My issue is that the field is sitting on the single post template created by ELementor in my site and this template is nowhere to be found as I understand it is “dynamically” created. ANyone can shed a bit of light on where I must be plancing the function call? with a shortcode in the ELementor Single Post?
Very lost here.
Thank you in advance for any insight..

• jarvis

• October 22, 2021 at 8:45 am

No idea if this would work but…

Convert your function to a custom shortcode:

function project_excerpt() {
	global $post;
	$text = get_field('Objetivos');
	if ( $text ) {
		$text = strip_shortcodes( $text );
		$text = str_replace(']]>', ']]>>', $text);
		$text_length = strlen($text); // Get text length (characters)
		$excerpt_length = 50; // 50 desired characters
		$excerpt_more = '…';

		// Shorten the text
		$text = substr($text, 0, $excerpt_length);

		// If the text is more than 50 characters, append $excerpt_more
		if ($text_length > $excerpt_length) {
			$text .= $excerpt_more;
		}

	}
	return apply_filters('the_excerpt', $text);
}
add_shortcode('custom_acf_excerpt', 'project_excerpt');  

You can then either call it as code:
<?php echo do_shortcode("[custom_acf_excerpt]"); ?>

Or as a shortcode in the editor:
[custom_acf_excerpt]

Code is untested

• hektorperez

• October 22, 2021 at 11:47 am

HI Jarvis.
Thank you very much for spending some time on this but this is not working for me..

Any other ideas?
Any help would be much appreciated. I am really lost as to how to proceed… I have been searching the web for hours to no avail, but not being a coder is resulting impossible to understand..

Thanks again.

• jarvis

• October 22, 2021 at 12:30 pm

Apologies, it was an error in my code!

Add the below to your functions file:

function project_excerpt() {
	global $post;
	$text = get_field('objetivos');
	if ( $text ) {
		$text = strip_shortcodes( $text );
		$text = str_replace(']]>', ']]>>', $text);
		$text_length = strlen($text); // Get text length (characters)
		$excerpt_length = 50; // 50 desired characters
		$excerpt_more = '…';

		// Shorten the text
		$text = substr($text, 0, $excerpt_length);

		// If the text is more than 50 characters, append $excerpt_more
		if ($text_length > $excerpt_length) {
			$text .= $excerpt_more;
		}

	}
	return $text;
}
add_shortcode('custom_acf_excerpt', 'project_excerpt');

This assumes 2 things:
1) The field name is actually a lower case o (not the label which is probably uppercase O)
2) It’s a standalone field i.e. not in a flexi layout, gutenberg block etc.
3) In your Elementor editor, you can add shortcodes

If you can, simply add
[custom_acf_excerpt]

I’ve just added Objetivos field to a fresh WP install.
I then added text to the field
As it’s using the twenty-twentyone theme, I added a shortcode widget into the Gutenberg editor, I then added [custom_acf_excerpt]
It displayed the truncated text I’d used.

• hektorperez

• October 22, 2021 at 1:25 pm

Wow Jarvis,
You are very kind to be helping out on this. I really appreciate it.
I have had to leave my work for a couple of hours but will test this as soon as I arrive.
In the meanwhile, I just wanted to note that the field I am targetting (Objetivos) is entered dynamically through the ACF selector on a template page that loads my posts in WP with Elementor. The field is a regular text widget that pulls the text dynamically from the ACF in each post item.
Hope this all makes sense.
Thanks again.

• hektorperez

• October 22, 2021 at 2:37 pm

hmm…
just tested. Not working here.. But I found that the field name was actaully lowercase. The label had a capital O.

Now with this change, the text field is disppearing completely..
Not sure what is happenning..

• hektorperez

• October 23, 2021 at 12:33 pm

got it!
Not quite sure what was not working, but I finally got it working.
THANK YOU JARVIS!