Product Listing Ignoring formatting

[rwoody]

I have very short product listing descriptions but I have specific formatting in html in the description. The listing page totally ignores the formatting, but displays it on the details page. Is there a way to get the listing page to display the formatted text?

[Ajeh]

Because the listing truncates the products_description based on length, everything is stripped out as it would make a real mess to cut off the end of the HTML code ...

[rwoody]

Ok, I was afraid of that... I need this formatting here... what can I do to fix this?

[Ajeh]

You would need to change the code and how it handles the products_description so that it does not truncate any of your text ...

[ungeziefer]

You would need to change the code and how it handles the products_description so that it does not truncate any of your text ...

Which code should we be modifying here?

Is it just a matter of changing a setting so that the entire description shows on the Listing page (which is what I would prefer, in any case)? And, if so, where is that done? (Under Configuration > All Listing > Display Product Description, it says "Do you want to display the Product Description - First 150 characters?"; but I'm not clear on how to turn off the character limit, or if this will even make the HTML render properly?)

I need line breaks; when the description all runs together it looks really horrible...

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Ajeh]

You would need to customize the:
/includes/modules/product_listing.php

Copy that to your templates and overrides directory:
/includes/modules/your_template_dir/product_listing.php

Then change the products_description so that it does not alter the HTML that you have nor truncate it ...

NOTE: this can result in some very long listings as well as issues on the display depending on your HTML in the description ...

[ungeziefer]

Yay! That worked! Thank you so much!

(I was actually on the right track, after reading another thread -- but I was trying to comment out the "zen_clean_html" part, which didn't work because I did not delete the closing parenthesis.)

Anyway, it looks the way I want it to now.

Hopefully this won't cause problems elsewhere. (All my descriptions are short, but one never knows . . .)

Thanks again -- I do appreciate it.

[chrisian]

can you tell me what changes you made to the product_listing.php because I need a solution for the same problem you have.

[ungeziefer]

Sorry -- I should have posted what lines needed to be changed.

Please make a backup copy of your "product_listing.php" file, in case I screw something up for you (or as long as you're using a custom/overrides folder you can just delete/replace the custom file if you need to).

In that file you want to look for "zen_clean_html" (no quotes). It appears in two places -- should be lines 98 and 100.

In line 98 where it says:

$lc_text = '<h3 class="itemTitle"><a href="' . zen_href_link(zen_get_info_page($listing->fields['products_id']), 'products_id=' . $listing->fields['products_id']) . '">' . $listing->fields['products_name'] . '</a></h3><div class="listingDescription">' . zen_trunc_string(zen_clean_html(stripslashes(zen_get_products_description($listi ng->fields['products_id'], $_SESSION['languages_id']))), PRODUCT_LIST_DESCRIPTION) . '</div>' ;

you want to remove the "(zen_clean_html" (note the parenthesis at the beginning); then remove one of the three closing parentheses after "['languages_id'])))", so there will be two not three: "['languages_id']))"

Do the same thing on line 100.

Let me know if this was unclear at all, or if it doesn't work for you.

[rwoody]

Ah Ha!! I forgot to remove the extra bracket!! I knew it had to be something simple!!!

Thanks