Howto control manual excerpt length?

Question

I have a website in which I need to control the displayed excerpt length. Some of the posts might have manual excerpt so I can't use the excedrpt_length filter.

I can of course4 use somekind of substr but was looking for a more elegant solution (if such exists)

Answer 1

Take a look on my answer here: Best Collection of Code for your functions.php file

If I understood your question correctly, it does what you are looking for.

Place this in functions.php:

function excerpt($num) {
    $limit = $num+1;
    $excerpt = explode(' ', get_the_excerpt(), $limit);
    array_pop($excerpt);
    $excerpt = implode(" ",$excerpt)."... (<a href='" .get_permalink($post->ID) ." '>Read more</a>)";
    echo $excerpt;
}

Then, in your theme, use the code <?php excerpt('22'); ?> to limit the excerpt to 22 characters.

:)

Answer 2

I'd say just look at how core does it: http://phpxref.ftwr.co.uk/wordpress/wp-includes/formatting.php.source.html#l1840

I took the liberty of putting the code here for ease of copying and pasting.

global $post;
if( empty($post->post_excerpt) ){
  $text = apply_filters( 'the_excerpt', get_the_excerpt() );
} else {
  $text = $post->post_excerpt;
  $text = strip_shortcodes( $text );
  $text = apply_filters('the_content', $text);
  $text = str_replace(']]>', ']]>', $text);
  $text = strip_tags($text);
  $excerpt_length = apply_filters('excerpt_length', 55);
  $excerpt_more = apply_filters('excerpt_more', ' ' . '[...]');
  $words = preg_split("/[\n\r\t ]+/", $text, $excerpt_length + 1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
  if ( count($words) > $excerpt_length ) {
    array_pop($words);
    $text = implode(' ', $words);
    $text = $text . $excerpt_more;
  } else {
    $text = implode(' ', $words);
  }
}