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PattyR

So I added 2 rss feeds to one of my customers sites http://www.debbiedaanen.com and I managed to get everything modified to my liking except for one thing.

Limiting the length (or number of characters) that display for my content.

I was able to limit the number of characters for the title, and then placed a hellip at the end to signify the text was being cut off, but I can't get it do the same for the content.

Here is my code

<div id=\"blognews\">
        <h5>Latest News</h5>
<?php
 
    require 'php/simplepie.inc';
 
    $url = 'http://www.debbiedaanen.com/blog/rss.xml';
 
    $feed = new SimplePie();
    $feed->set_feed_url($url);
    $feed->init();
    $feed->strip_htmltags(array('img','embed','strong','html','onclick','onmouseover','onmouseout','center'));
 
    // default starting item
    $start = 0;
 
    // default number of items to display. 0 = all
    $length = 1; 
 
    // if single item, set start to item number and length to 1
    if(isset($_GET['item']))
{
        $start = $_GET['item'];
        $length = 1;
}
 
    // set item link to script uri
    $link = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
 
    // loop through items
    foreach($feed->get_items($start,$length) as $key=>$item)
{
 
        // set query string to item number
        $queryString = '?item=' . $key;
 
        // if we're displaying a single item, set item link to itself and set query string to nothing
        if(isset($_GET['item']))
        {
                $link = $item->get_link();
                $queryString = '';        
        }
 
        // display item title and date    
        echo '<a href=\"http://www.debbiedaanen.com/blog/blog.html\">' . substr($item->get_title(), 0, 35) . '...</a>';
        echo '<span>'.$item->get_date('M j, Y'). '</span>';

 
        // if single item, display content
        if(isset($_GET['item']))
        {
                echo ' <span>'.$item->get_content().'</span><br>';
        }
        echo '<br>';echo $item->get_description();
}
 
?>
		</div>
		
        <div id=\"wallnews\">
        <h5>Wall of Fame</h5>
        <?php
 
 
    $url = 'http://www.debbiedaanen.com/blog/walloffame.xml';
 
    $feed = new SimplePie();
    $feed->set_feed_url($url);
    $feed->init();
    $feed->strip_htmltags(array('img','embed','strong','html','onclick','onmouseover','onmouseout','center'));
 
    // default starting item
    $start = 0;
 
    // default number of items to display. 0 = all
    $length = 1; 
 
    // if single item, set start to item number and length to 1
    if(isset($_GET['item']))
{
        $start = $_GET['item'];
        $length = 1;
}
 
    // set item link to script uri
    $link = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
 
    // loop through items
    foreach($feed->get_items($start,$length) as $key=>$item)
{
 
        // set query string to item number
        $queryString = '?item=' . $key;
 
        // if we're displaying a single item, set item link to itself and set query string to nothing
        if(isset($_GET['item']))
        {
                $link = $item->get_link();
                $queryString = '';        
        }
 
        // display item title and date    
        echo '<a href=\"http://www.debbiedaanen.com/blog/wall_of_fame.html\">' . substr($item->get_title(), 0, 35) . '...</a>';
        echo '<span>'.$item->get_date('M j, Y'). '</span>';

 
        // if single item, display content
        if(isset($_GET['item']))
        {
                echo ' <span>'.$item->get_content().'</span><br>';
        }
        echo '<br>';echo $item->get_description();

}
 
?>
        </div>

When I try to apply the same logic I used for my title to the content it makes my content disappear. So my current solution was just placing it in a div with overflow:hidden on the stylesheet, but being the php noob that I am... I would love to know why applying the same logic from the title to the content didnt work, and how I could make it work.

PattyR

Ok so I am still working on things as I posted this, and I somewhat fixed my problem. I did manage to limit my content characters, but now I need to fix it so that it doesn't cut off words.

... If I manage to get it working I will post the code for others.

chriscoyier

You should look into using PHP to truncate the string by words:

http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/412

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