how to display the first 3 paragraphs of [+summary+] dynamically?

- 486 Posts
nickf08 Reply #1, 17 years, 5 months ago
Hello,

I am using ditto to display a summary of the content of news item on a page.

The Ditto call is working but I want to limit the [+summary+] content to the first 3 paragraphs (rather than a character (as is the case now) or word limit).

In other words, I want [+summary+] to display the entire content in the first 3 paragraphs for each news item (eg after 3 </p> tags in the [content] area).

The news item are in their very own template called "3 column - news".

Any ideas on how to achieve this dynamically?

I have previously posted here but believe this is beyond just ditto now - and need help from a guru!

(http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,35652.0.html)

In the replies there was mention of a phx statement (or equivalent) for limiting the number of paragraphs or creating a plugin to add  after the 3rd instance of the </p> by using regex but I am not sure what this means or how to achieve it (I am not a programmer)

My current ditto call looks like this:
```
[[Ditto? &startID=`49` &parents=`49` &truncLen=`400` &tpl=`intranet-news` &tplFirst=`intranet-news-first` &paginate=`1` &extenders=`summary,dateFilter` &paginateAlwaysShowLinks=`1` &orderBy=`newsDate DESC` &tagData=`summary`]] 
```
I would be ever so grateful for any assistance.

Thank you kindly.
Web design Adelaide
http://gocreate.com.au
- 486 Posts
nickf08 Reply #2, 17 years, 5 months ago
For the time being I have solved this using a template variable called "newsSummary" which I manually copy and paste the first couple of paragraphs into.

The ditto call is now:
```
[[Ditto? &startID=`49` &parents=`49` &tpl=`intranet-news` &tplFirst=`intranet-news-first` &paginate=`1` &extenders=`summary,dateFilter` &paginateAlwaysShowLinks=`1` &orderBy=`createdon DESC` &tagData=`summary`]] 
```
The template is now:
```
<div class="news">
 <h2><a href="[~[+id+]~]" title="[+longtitle+]">[+title+]</a></h2>
 <p>[+newsDate+]</p>
 [+newsSummary+]
 <a href="[~[+id+]~]" title="Read the whole story" class="more">More...</a></p>
</p> 
</div>
```
My preference is still for a dynamic option so if anyone comes up with an amazing idea to make it happen dynamically, I would love to hear from you.

Thanks again.
Web design Adelaide
http://gocreate.com.au