Adam Trickett

Website designer & developer

Trim and format WordPress post content as an excerpt

By default, when you access the WordPress $post object, the $post->post_excerpt item is always empty UNLESS you manually handcrafted an excerpt for that particular post. This portion of code is a workaround if you only need the excerpt. It trims the $post->post_content, strips out formating and tacks a Read More link on the end.

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<?php
    $content = strip_tags(strip_shortcodes($item->post_content));
    $content = str_replace(array("\r\n","\n\n",' '),' ',$content);
    $words = explode(' ',$content);
    if (count($words) > 40) {
        $excerpt = implode(' ',array_slice($words,0,40))
        .'<a href="'.get_permalink($post->ID).'">[Read More]</a>';
    } else {
        $excerpt = $content;
    }
    echo '
<div>'.$excerpt.'</div>
 
';
?>
<?php
	$content = strip_tags(strip_shortcodes($item->post_content));
	$content = str_replace(array("\r\n","\n\n",' '),' ',$content);
	$words = explode(' ',$content);
	if (count($words) > 40) {
		$excerpt = implode(' ',array_slice($words,0,40))
		.'<a href="'.get_permalink($post->ID).'">[Read More]</a>';
	} else {
		$excerpt = $content;
	}
	echo '
<div>'.$excerpt.'</div>

';
?>

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