limit characters from <?php the_tags ?>

I have a layout that have to show the tags horizontally. I want to be able to limit the amount of characters outputted.

Example - if I set the limit to 14 the following should happen.

Original: Cats, Dogs, Rain

New output: Cats, Dogs, Ra..

Please note that <?php the_tags ?> returns an array. It is everything returned I want limited to 14 characters.

UPDATE In order to remove any confusion I have updated the post with a screenshot displaying why I want to set this limit. This should make it more clear what kind of solu开发者_高级运维tion I am searching for alt text http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/2253/linit.png

---

substr

Check it out http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.substr.php

Something like this should work for you:

$tags = implode(', ', $the_tags)
echo substr($tags, 0, 14) . (strlen($tags) > 14) ? '..' : '';

substr will handle just showing 14 characters, then the last part appends the .. when needed.

---

How about using the substr function:

$string_new = substr($string, 0, 14);
echo $string_new;

You might want to also use the strip_tags function if you there are html tags coming in between your text.

---

This is not very beautiful to cut the words in the middle.
This function will cut your phrase afrer the end of word, but not longer cpecified length.

function short($txt,$length)
{
    $txt = trim(strip_tags($txt));
    if(strlen($txt) > $length)
    {
        $txt = substr($txt,0,$length);
        $pos = strrpos($txt, " ");
        $txt = substr($txt,0,$pos);
        $txt .= "...";
    }
    return $txt;
}

But all answers before are right too.

---

The trouble with all these answers is that it has not been made clear that the_tags() returns an array of HTML links!

Running substr(implode(', ', get_the_tags(), X) might return something like;

<a href="/tag1/">Tag 1</a>, <a href="/tag2/">Tag 2</a>, <a href="/tag3

You'd be much better off opting for a CSS / front-end solution (as @Gumbo mentioned in the original comments).

That way, you'll still have your link juice and accessibility marked up, without ending up with something like;

<a href="/keyword-tag/">Keyword Tag</a>, <a href="/awesome-keyword/">Awes...</a>

---

This should really rebuild the whole chain of the_tags, get_the_tag_list and get_the_term_list, but here's a solution in a single function.

It's based on WordPress' get_the_term_list function in wp-includes/category-template.php.

If no trim_length is specified, it hands off to the_tags. HTML entities were decoded so string counts would be accurate, then re-encoded into the output string.

I wasn't completely clear about the need for $before, $sep and $after in the last the_tags filter, so I deferred to what WordPress was already doing there.

function the_tags_trimmed( $before = null, $sep = ', ', $after = '', $trim_length = -1, $trim_characters = '...' ) {
    if ( $trim_length < 1 )
        return the_tags( $before, $sep, $after );

    if ( null === $before )
        $before = __('Tags: ');

    $tags = get_the_terms( 0, 'post_tag' );

    if ( empty( $tags ) )
        return false;

    $html_length = 0;
    $x = 0;

    foreach ( $tags as $tag ) {
        $link = get_term_link( $tag, 'post_tag' );
        if ( is_wp_error( $link ) )
            return $link;
        $tag->name = html_entity_decode( $tag->name );
        if ( strlen($tag->name) + $html_length > $trim_length )
            $tag->name = substr( $tag->name, 0, $trim_length - $html_length) . $trim_characters;
        $tag_links[] = '<a href="' . $link . '" rel="tag">' . htmlentities($tag->name) . '</a>';
        $html_length += strlen($tag->name);
        if ( $x++ < count( $tags ) - 1 )
            $html_length += strlen( $sep );

        if ( $html_length >= $trim_length )
            break;
    }

    $tag_links = apply_filters( "term_links-post_tag", $tag_links );
    $tag_list = $before . join( $sep, $tag_links ) . $after;
    echo apply_filters( 'the_tags', $tag_list, $before, $sep, $after );
}

This was lightly tested and should accomplish the @Thomas was asking for.