Character Limit In Display Output

FidelGonzales

I have lurked this site for several years, usually answering my questions through extensive use of the search function. So, finally, here's my first post.

On a shopping cart, for the purpose of design layout consistency, I need to reduce the display of the product name text character count. Currently, the character count is only limited by the limitations listed in the database. That limit of 300 characters is fine, but for specific pages in the template, I need the character count limit to be somewhere around 21.

Below are a few of the options I have tried. None have worked. I would appreciate any assistance. Any suggestions? Thanks.

ORIGINAL CODE

WORD LIMIT - Renders the number 4

CHARACTER LIMIT - Renders the number 50

Weedpacket

So ... how are you trying to use $numwords and/or $limit?

FidelGonzales

Thanks. I was looking try both.

Immediately after I posted, I figured out the right combination that works. Unfortunately, since that was my first post with my account, the post was sent to the moderator que and was not yet published, and I could not reply back with the update.

Here's what I came up with. It looks crude in style. But it works. Thanks again.

<td align="center" valign="top"> <strong><a title="<?php echo $product_name ?>" href="<?php echo $product_flypage ?>"><?php 

$length = 20 ;
$text = "$product_name" ;
$display = substr($text, 0, $length) ;
echo $display;
echo "..." ;		

		 ?><br>
          <?php echo $product_sku ?></a> </strong></td>

Weedpacket

For shortening to a maximum number of characters you might like to look at [man]wordwrap[/man] as a way of avoiding cutting the string off in the middle of a word; use a character that couldn't appear in the product name (NUL - [font=monospace]\x00[/font] - is the first one I thought of, but the default [font=monospace]\n[/font] would probably work as well), then use strpos to find the first occurrence of that character (if it's not there then everything fits one one line anyway). That's where you truncate the string.

Also, I just remembered this.

FidelGonzales

Excellent suggestion. Thanks for the link. Tagged and bagged in the bookmarks. Thanks.