#Hacksaw

A migrated (and improved) version (for Craft CMS) of Brett DeWoody's Hacksaw for ExpressionEngine. This plugin adds a Twig filter to take your entry's content and whittle it down to a more manageable size. It strips the HTML and limits the excerpts by character count, word count or cutoff marker.

Installation

1. Move hacksaw directory to craft/plugins directory
2. Install Hacksaw under Craft Admin › Settings › Plugins

Parameters

There are several parameters you can use to control how the content is truncated. These options are:

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
chars	int	null	Limit by number of characters (Note: includes chars of HTML)
chars_start	int	0	Starting point for chars limit (used with chars param)
words	int	null	Limit by number of words
cutoff	string	null	Limit by a specific cutoff string
append	string	null	String to append to the end of the excerpt
allow	string	null	HTML tags you want to allow

Usage

For example, if you want to limit your excerpt to 100 words you would do this:

{{ entry.richTextField|hacksaw(words='100') }}

By default Hacksaw will strip all HTML from your excerpt. If you would like to keep some basic HTML you can use the allow parameter to keep specific HTML tags. For example, let's say you want to keep <p> and <b> tags:

{{ entry.richTextField|hacksaw(words='100', allow='<p><b>') }}

Another way to limit content is by a cutoff string. This is similar to the way WordPress's more feature works. In your content you could add a specific string to indicate the spot you want the excerpt to stop. Let's say you use, <!-- END -->; to cut the excerpt off at this location you would do this:

{{ entry.richTextField|hacksaw(cutoff='<!-- END -->') }}

The cutoff parameter can be coupled with the words parameter in case you forget to add the cutoff string to some of your entries. This way the excerpt will be truncated at the cutoff string, OR after X words.

You can add any string at the end of the excerpt using the append parameter, like this:

{{ entry.richTextField|hacksaw(words='100', append='...') }}

This would append "..." to the end of the excerpt.

Note: If you are including HTML in the append parameter, the elements must be present in the allow paramenter. If you are including a Craft variable in any parameter, it must be added using the Twig concatenation operator, ~. Example of both:

{{ entry.richTextField|hacksaw(words='100', allow='<a>', append='<a href="' ~ entry.url ~ '">Continue...</a>') }}

Feedback?

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