Question

So I am trying to parse an XML file and display first 150 words of an article with READ MORE link. It doesn’t exactly parse 150 words though. I am also not sure how to make it so it does not parse IMG tag code, etc… the code is below

    // Script displays 3 most recent blog posts from blog.pinchit.com (blog..pinchit.com/api/read)
    // The entries on homepage show the first 150 words of description and "READ MORE" link

    // PART 1 - PARSING

    // if it was a JSON file
    //  $string=file_get_contents("http://blog.pinchit.com/api/read");
    //  $json_a=json_decode($string,true);
    //  var_export($json_a);


    // XML Parsing
    $file = "http://blog.pinchit.com/api/read";
    $posts_to_display = 3;
    $posts = array();

    // get all the file nodes
    if(!$xml=simplexml_load_file($file)){
        trigger_error('Error reading XML file',E_USER_ERROR);
    }

    // counter for posts member array
    $counter = 0;

    // Accessing elements within an XML document that contain characters not permitted under PHP's naming convention 
    // (e.g. the hyphen) can be accomplished  by encapsulating the element name within braces and the apostrophe.

    foreach($xml->posts->post as $post){

        //post's title
        $posts[$counter]['title'] = $post->{'regular-title'};

        // post's full body 
        $posts[$counter]['body'] = $post->{'regular-body'};

        // post's body's first 150 words 
        //for some reason, I am not sure if it's exactly 150 
        $posts[$counter]['preview'] = substr($posts[$counter]['body'], 0, 150);

        //strip all the html tags so it doesn't mess up the page
        $posts[$counter]['preview'] = strip_tags($posts[$counter]['preview']);


        //post's id
        $posts[$counter]['id'] = $post->attributes()->id;


        $posts_to_display--;
        $counter++;
        //exit the for loop after we parse out all the articles that we want
        if ($posts_to_display == 0 ) break;
    }

    // Displays all of the posts

    foreach($posts as $post){

        echo "<b>" . $post['title'] . "</b>";
        echo "<br/>";
        echo $post['preview'];
        echo " <a href='http://blog.pinchit.com/post/" . $post[id] . "'>Read More</a>";
        echo "<br/><br/>";

    } 

Here are how results look now.

Editor’s Pick: Club Sportiva
Nothing makes you feel as totally free and in control as a day behind the wheel of a sleek, sophisticated, sexy sports car. It’s no surprise Read More

Pinchy Drinks & Rocks: The Hotel Utah Saloon
Hotel Utah Read More

Monday Menu: Spicy Grapefruit, Paprika, Creamsicles
Feeling summery and savory today, and we have to admit it took a lot to resist the urge to make this an all appetizers, all desserts, or all drinks Read More

Answer 1

The HTML tags are counting against your character total. Strip the tags out first, then take your preview sample:

$preview = strip_tags($posts[$counter]['body']);
$posts[$counter]['preview'] = substr($preview, 0, 150).'...';

Also, one usually adds an ellipse (“…”) to the end of truncated text to indicate that it continues.

Note that this has the potential disadvantage of removing tags you DO want, like <p> and <br>. If you want to preserve those, you can pass them as the second argument for strip_tags:

$preview = strip_tags($posts[$counter]['body'], '<br><p>');
$posts[$counter]['preview'] = substr($preview, 0, 150).'...';

BUT, be forewarned that XML-style tags might throw this off (<br />). If you’re dealing with XML/HTML mixed, you might need to elevate your tag filtering using something like htmLawed, but the concept remains the same – get rid of the HTML before you truncate.