Question

I’m using CodeIgniter for my website. I’m also using the tumblr API on my site to show posted news.

Because showing the entire text is a bit too much, I want to truncate the body copy to 150 characters, I do this by using the character_limiter function of CI.

The code is as followed in my ‘home’ controller:

public function index() {       
    //Title for home page   
    $data['title'] = "Home - Welcome";

    // Obtain an array of posts from the specified blog
    // See the config file for a list of settings available
    $tumblr_posts = $this->tumblr->read_posts();

    foreach($tumblr_posts as $tumblr_post) {
        $tumblr_post['body'] = character_limiter($tumblr_post['body'], 150);
    }

    // Output the posts 
    $data['tumblr_posts'] = $tumblr_posts;      

    // Load the template from the views directory
    $this->layout->view('home', $data);
}   

The problem is, that $tumblr_post['body'] isn’t shortened when I echo it on my view page. Doing it like above works in Asp.net (C#) but it doesn’t seem to work in php, anyone know why and how to solve it or is there an other way?

Answer 1

Your problem is with the foreach loop. You need to add a & before $tumblr_post to pass it by reference. This makes sure you are actually editing the values in the array. Without the &, you’re just editing a local variable and not the array.

Try it like this (notice the &):

foreach($tumblr_posts as &$tumblr_post) {
    $tumblr_post['body'] = character_limiter($tumblr_post['body'], 150);
}