Truncate custom post type content

Question

I am customizing a widget used for displaying testimonials. The widget is working fine, except it shows all content and i want to limit the text/characters so the footer of the website looks balance. Here is the widget code snippet:

function widget( $args, $instance ) {
    extract( $args );

    $title = $instance['title'] ;
    $count = $instance['count'];
    $url = $instance['url'];

    echo $before_widget;
    echo '<div class="testimonials-container">'; 
    if ( $title )
        echo '<h3 class="replace"><a href="' . $url . '">' . $title . '</a></h3>' ;
        ?>
    <?php 
        $query = new WP_Query();
        $query->query('post_type=testimonial&posts_per_page='.$count);
        ?>
        <?php if ($query->have_posts()) : while ($query->have_posts()) : $query->the_post(); ?>
            <div class="testimonials-content">
            <?php limit_text(the_content(), 15); ?>
            <span class="testimonial-name"><em>         
            <?php echo get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), 'pkb_author_name', true); ?></em></span>
            </div>
        <?php endwhile; endif;?>

To truncate it, i use this:

function limit_text($text, $limit) {
    if (strlen($text) > $limit) {
        $words = str_word_count($text, 2);
        $pos = array_keys($words);
        $text = substr($text, 0, $pos[$limit]) . '...';
    }

    return $text;
}

Its not working. What am i doing wrong here?

Answer 1

Untested. But try: <?php echo apply_filters( 'the_content', limit_text( get_the_content(), 15 ) ); ?>

15 is for char limit or word limit? If words, using strlen is incorrect.

Try using WP wp_trim_words() instead.