How to character limit for custom fields?

<?php
$trim_length = 21;  //desired length of text to display
$custom_field = 'your custom field key here';
$value = get_post_meta($post->ID, $custom_field, true);
if ($value) {
  echo '<p>I want to use: ' . rtrim(substr($value,0,$trim_length)) . '...</p>';
}
?>

Hi MichaelH,

I can’t seem the get this to work. When I put this in my functions.php file I got an error due to the <?php that’s at the beginning. I placed the code exactly like this to not get an error:

$trim_length = 21;  //desired length of text to display
$custom_field = 'your custom field key here';
$value = get_post_meta($post->ID, $custom_field, true);
if ($value) {
  echo '<p>I want to use: ' . rtrim(substr($value,0,$trim_length)) . '...</p>';
}

but it still doesn’t work.. why am I doing wrong?

Correction, this is how I placed my code:

$trim_length = 21;  //desired length of text to display
$custom_field = 'drink description';
$value = get_post_meta($post->ID, $custom_field, true);
if ($value) {
  echo '<p>I want to use: ' . rtrim(substr($value,0,$trim_length)) . '...</p>';
}

any help is welcome!

I placed the code in my loop so that it pulls the custom field on every post like so:

<?php
		$trim_length = 5;  //desired length of text to display
		$custom_field = 'drink description';
		$value = get_post_meta($post->ID, $custom_field, true);
		if ($value) {
		  echo rtrim(substr($value,0,$trim_length));
		}
		?>

but no dice….

got it to work. It was working this last time I tried, i just hadn’t noticed it… thanks for the code!