Truncating a custom field content based on CHARACTER count

• jodriscoll

• March 14, 2015 at 10:03 pm

Hi all,
New to the ACF scene and just started using it. Read a bunch of documentation and trying to catch up on my PHP/WordPress literature. However, I stumbled on a great function that will pull a custom field and truncate it depending on the word count. However, I need to convert this to character count and am not sure the best way of doing so.

within functions.php

function project_excerpt() {
  global $post;
  $text = get_field('project_description');
  if ( '' != $text ) {
    $text = strip_shortcodes( $text );
    $text = apply_filters('the_content', $text);
    $text = str_replace(']]>', ']]>>', $text);
    $excerpt_length = 50;  // 50 words
    $excerpt_more = ' ...';
    $text = wp_trim_words( $text, $excerpt_length, $excerpt_more );
  }
  return apply_filters('the_excerpt', $text);
}

within template file
<?php echo project_excerpt(); ?>

In a nutshell, I create a variable for the custom field “project_description” called $text. If the text contains content, strip short codes, apply similar filters as the_content has, str_replace (not exactly sure, but it was included), set a length to 50 words (this is where I want a character count), add a excerpt suffix of “…” then trim the words based off the previously define filters.

Hopefully someone can shed a little help on this.

Thanks!

• dkeeling

• March 18, 2015 at 2:19 am

Rather than use wp_trim_words(), you could use PHP’s substr() like this:

function project_excerpt() {
  global $post;
  $text = get_field('project_description');
  if ( '' != $text ) {
    $text = strip_shortcodes( $text );
    $text = apply_filters('the_content', $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);
}

• jodriscoll

• March 20, 2015 at 12:22 am

dkeeling, thanks so much for your assistance on this! I greatly appreciate it!

I have one additional questions — is there an easy way to strip the styling of the field being brought in? The client has some bolding/italicizing of text that I need to be stripped during the function you suggested above.

• dkeeling

• March 20, 2015 at 12:42 am

No problem @jodriscoll. 🙂

You can use strip_tags() to remove all tags. You can also choose to allow specific tags. Here’s a link about that…

The updated code would then be:

function project_excerpt() {
    global $post;
    $text = get_field('project_description');
    if ( '' != $text ) {
      $text = strip_shortcodes( $text );
      $text = apply_filters('the_content', $text);
      $text = strip_tags($text);
      $text = str_replace(']]>', ']]>>', $text);
      $text_length = strlen($text); // Get text length (characters)
      $excerpt_length = 350;  // 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);
  }

One other note: I left them in, but I’m not sure that you need the calls to apply_filters() in there if you’re stripping everything out. You could just eliminate the first line:

$text = apply_filters('the_content', $text);

…and change the last one to return $text.

• jodriscoll

• March 20, 2015 at 6:44 am

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