Way to show content of a post, but if exceeds character limit revert to excerpt?

Question

So I am working on a site for a client of mine. We have about 50+ posts filed in a category called "Articles". I created a custom page template that has a custom query to display all the posts in a bullet list on this page, and if you click on it you can go directly to the post to read more or open a PDF directly. Where I am hitting a road block is we have 2 specific articles that are more then just PDF's, they are about 3-6 paragraphs instead. SO I wanted to know if it is possible to display all the posts in the list like I am now, and if it exceeds around 100 characters then revert to the excerpt we made for those posts specifically.

Currently my code looks like this:

                <?php
            //for each child of category 16 (articles), show title of posts
            $cat_args=array('child_of' => 16, 'orderby' => 'name', 'order' => 'DESC');
            $categories=get_categories($cat_args);
              foreach($categories as $category) {
                $args=array('showposts' => -1, 'category__in' => array($category->term_id), 'caller_get_posts'=>1);
                $posts=get_posts($args);
                  if ($posts) {
                    echo '<h3><a href="' . get_category_link( $category->term_id ) . '" title="' . sprintf( __( "View all posts in %s" ), $category->name ) . '" ' . '>' . $category->name.'</a></h3> ';
                    foreach($posts as $post) {
                      setup_postdata($post); ?>
                        <!--<li><?php the_title_attribute(); ?></li>-->
                        <ul>
                            <li><?php echo get_the_content(); ?></li>
                        </ul>
                      <?php
                    } // foreach($posts
                  } // if ($posts
                } // foreach($categories
            ?>

Thank you! Been pulling my hair out for days on this one.

Answer 1

replace the_content(); with echo wpse_limit_content();

   function wpse_limit_content() {
   $content = $post->post_content;
   $MAX_LENGTH = 100;

    if ( strlen(  $content )  <= $MAX_LENGTH )
        return apply_filters('the_content', $content );

    $s2  = substr( $content, 0, $MAX_LENGTH  );
    $s3  = preg_split( "/\s+(?=\S*+$)/", $s2 );
    $s4  = $s3[0];

        return apply_filters( 'the_excerpt', $s4 );

  }

If the string is to long it trims it to give you a nice 100 char excerpt.

you could also just do:

$content = $post->post_content;

if (strlen( $content > 100 ) {
    the_excerpt();
} else {
   the_content();

Answer 2

You could just print out the_excerpt and set the excerpt length to whatever you wanted your limit to be.