We launched new forums in March 2019—join us there. In a hurry for help with your website? Get Help Now!
MODX Community Forums Archive

Using an ellipsis conditional to show extra if things are greater than 200 characters

    • 36763
    • 70 Posts
    vrdriver Reply #1, 12 years, 7 months ago
    Hi guys and gals,
    I've been struggling with this problem and am not having much luck, and not even sure if it can be done.

    What I want to do is show the first 200 characters of a page, but if it has more than 200, then it should also show a "Read more" link, to use in a news listing type scenario.

    This is what I preposed, but am stuck.

    [[+content:ellipsis=`200`:gt=`200`:then=`read more code']]


    I thought this kind of thing may work, but I'm a little stuck. Merging to Revo slightly feels like I have to relearn a few things. smiley

    I'm currently using these calls in my template.

    template name: jjnewsitems

    <div class="newsitems">  
[[+content:ellipsis=`200`]]
</div>



    In the main template:

    <div class="jjnewsgroup">
[[getResources? &parents=`33` &tpl=`jjnewsitems` &includeContent=`1`]]                                
</div>


    any help would be great. Thanks, Steve [ed. note: vrdriver last edited this post 12 years, 7 months ago.]
      • 33968
      • 863 Posts
      Lucas Reply #2, 12 years, 7 months ago
      I think you'll need a custom modifier. Save the following as a snippet called truncate or similar with the following code (not tested!):
      <?php
$options = explode('|',$options);
$limit  = intval($options[0]) ? intval($options[0]) : 200;
$ending = $options[1] ? $options[1] : '…';

if (strlen($input) > $limit) {
    return substr($input,0,$limit).$ending;
} else return $input;


      Then you can do this:
      [[+content:truncate=`200|read more code`]]

      You can specify 2 options, separated by a pipe '|'. First is length to limit the text snippet to; 2nd is the ending you would like appended if more than the limit.

      Note: replace that weird character on the second line of the snippet with &#8230;. Forums are still a bit buggy smiley [ed. note: okyanet last edited this post 12 years, 7 months ago.]
        • 36763
        • 70 Posts
        vrdriver Reply #3, 12 years, 7 months ago
        Ah, yes. I that makes sense. Thanks for your help. I'm absolutely stuffed right now, but will try that out tomorrow. Appreciate the quick response, and will let you know how I go. shocked)
          • 36763
          • 70 Posts
          vrdriver Reply #4, 12 years, 7 months ago
          Lucas, thank you so much! That worked beautifully.

          Just for everyone else wanting to do this, I amended my "view more code", so that the whole chunk is like this now.

          <div class="newsitems"> 
[[+content:truncate=`200`:...<a href="[[~[[+id]]]]">Read more</a>`]]
</div>