Trouble with ditto and truncate.

- 53 Posts
steve.mullen Reply #1, 16 years, 4 months ago
Hello, I am tring to show news on a homepage and want to limit the characters. I have read about using either [+summary+] or [+introtext+] and am not sure which to use. I have tried and neither seem to work.

Here is where I call ditto:
```
[[Ditto? &parents=`49` &tpl=`ditto.title.date.description` &dateFormat=`%b %d, %Y` &display=`3` &dateSource=`pub_date` &orderBy=`pub_date DESC` &trunc=`1` &truncLen=`219` &truncText=`...read more` ]]
```
and here is my template chunk:
```
<div class="item">
      <div class="date">
         [+date+]
          <strong>15</strong>
          <em>mar</em>
     </div>
     <div class="description">
          <h4><a href="[~[+id+]~]">[+pagetitle+]</a></h4>
          <p> [+summary+][+link+]</p>
     </div>
</div>
```
If I replace summary with content, I get the full text, but when I put summary or intro text I do not get anything.

I also have one other question regarding this, as you can see here:
```
<div class="date">
         [+date+]
          <strong>15</strong>
          <em>mar</em>
     </div>
```
I am wanting to put the day in strong, and the month in em. How can I split up +date+ like that?

Thanks for all the help!
- 86 Posts
labanino Reply #2, 15 years, 9 months ago
Because this is an old post I guess you already figure out. If you don’t, &truncLen will do it. I’m a MODx apprentice but I can tell you that &trunc and &truncText don’t get along. I had the same problem, when I added &trunc, &truncText=`...read more` disappeared.

About [+date+], you can use instead createdon:date, something like this:
```
<h2><a href="[~[+id+]~]">[+title+]</a></h2>
<div class="date-wrapper">
    <span class="month">[+createdon:date=`%b`+].</span>
    <span class="day">[+createdon:date=`%d`+]</span>
</div>
[+summary+]
<div class="read-more">[+link+]</div>
</div>
```
I hope it helps you or someone else.
I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.