Divide the list into two columns (get_posts)

Question

The function below lists posts based on custom field.

The result is involved in a list <li></li>. What I would like to do is count how many list items there are, then divide it into two ul's. Is there any way to split the result into two columns?

function article_series() {
global $post;
$series = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'Series', true);
if($series) :
    $args = array(
        'numberposts' => -1,
        'meta_key' => 'Series',
        'meta_value' => $series,
    );
    $series_posts = get_posts($args);
    if($series_posts) :
        $class = preg_replace("/[^a-z0-9\\040\\.\\-\\_\\\\]/i", "", $series);
        $class = strtolower(str_replace(array(' ', ' '), '-', $class));
        echo '<div class="series series-' . $class . '"><h4 class="series-title">' . __('Articles in this series') . '</h4><ul>';
        foreach($series_posts as $serial) :
            if($serial->ID == $post->ID)
                echo '<li class="current-post">' . $serial->post_title . '</li>';
            else
                echo '<li><a href="' . get_permalink($serial->ID) . '" title="' . str_replace('"', '"', $serial->post_title) . '">' . str_replace('"', '"', $serial->post_title) . '</a></li>';
        endforeach;
        echo '</ul></div>';
    endif;
endif;

Function created by justintadlock.com

Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

You could do this with the modulo operator.

$posts = get_posts($args);
$html = '<ul>';
$limit = 5;
$i = 1;

foreach ($posts as $post) {
    $html .= '<li>' . $post->post_title . '</li>';

    if($i % $limit == 0) {
        $html .= '</ul><ul>';
    }

    $i++;
}

$html .= '</ul>';
echo $html;

Answer 2

You'll want to look at the number of series posts and stick an end/start <ul> in the middle. Something like:

echo '<ul class="left">';
$series_count = count($series_posts);
$series_middle = ceil($series_count / 2);
for ($i = 0; $i < $series_count; $i++) {
    if ($serial->ID == $post->ID)
        echo '<li class="current-post">' . $serial->post_title . '</li>';
    else
        echo '<li><a href="' . get_permalink($serial->ID) . '" title="' . str_replace('"', '"', $serial->post_title) . '">' . str_replace('"', '"', $serial->post_title) . '</a></li>';

    if ($i == $series_middle)
        echo '</ul><ul class="right">';
}
echo '</ul>';

Then you can use CSS to style the two lists to appear next to each other.