Trim text in WP (php) - php

Question

I am new to php and trying to trim the lines of text generated by the ('information') part of the code seen below (in my custom WP theme):
<div class="information"><?php echo get_post_meta(get_the_ID(),'information',true); ?></div>
Each post has a different lenght of it's information (basically like a excerpt, but pulled from a custom field in each post) text, which messes up my archive/blog page, as i use a 3 columns grid. I need the lenght of all posts seen on the archive page to be equally long, by restricting the "information" text to be no more than lets say 150 characters long.
I see the fenction in this piece of code for example, taken from a default WP file, but can't seem to wrap it around my own piece of code seen above, to make it work like i want it to:
<?php
et_divi_post_meta();
if ( 'on' !== et_get_option( 'divi_blog_style', 'false' ) || ( is_search() && ( 'on' === get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), '_et_pb_use_builder', true ) ) ) ) {
truncate_post( 270 );
} else {
the_content();
}
?>
This is what i want/talk about:
Before:
POST 1
I am a wordpress post, with a long text, that should not be so long, as it makes the 3 column setup of the archive page look stupid.
After:
POST 1
I am a wordpress post, with a long text, that should not be so long...
How do i do this?
Thanks!

Answer 1

You can use substr() php function to get part of the string.
Take a look at this example function.
function trimResult($string, $len = 150){
if(strlen($string)> $len){
$string = substr($string,0,$len) . "..."; // to let the user know that was truncated...
}
return $string;
}
ref: http://php.net/substr
Specific code example, will be a better solution to include the php function on a global file.
<?php
function trimResult($string, $len = 150){
if(strlen($string)> $len){
$string = substr($string,0,$len) . "..."; // to let the user know that was truncated...
}
return $string;
}
?>
<div class="information"><?php echo trimResult(get_post_meta(get_the_ID(),'information',true)); ?></div>
Hope it helps.

Answer 2

$post = "I am a wordpress post, with a long text, that should not be so long, as it makes the 3 column setup of the archive page look stupid.";
$post = mb_strimwidth($post, 0, 70, "...");
echo $post;
result: "I am a wordpress post, with a long text, that should not be so long..."
Add ... if string is too long PHP