How to handle the Teasers and Body content in Drupal!

There are two weaknesses about teaser in Drupal core.

1. It seems like such a limitation to have a teaser be defined in core as "the beginning MARKUP up to markup character x".

   There should be IN CORE a way to make a teaser be what it really is semantically-speaking : something that will grab your interest and make you want to read the FULL thing. Can be a summary, can be the beginning sentences WITHOUT the picture that finds itself in the markup, etc. So +1 for the possibility of an added textarea for teaser :)
   This added field could be turned on and off. And all this could be customized in the administrator control panel, ov course.

2. ALSO, I think that it's about time that a readmore link INLINE with the teaser becomes an optional admin setting as well.

   Just like we can set in the administrator control panel the length used to chop off a content to make a teaser automatically, we should in my opinion add the option to add a read more LINK, with the teaser, when the teaser differs from the content. It is not obvious at all that there is something more to read, from a "read more" link that finds itself separate from the text, among other links like "add a comment".

   I am aware that much can be done in the node template, but placing a link INLINE with the teaser is not easy.
   It requires to actually modify the teaser.

   There is a contributed module that does that, and does it poorly in my opinion (at best it can). It is functional but bloated (to no fault of the module's maintainer). It uses all of this code to add a simple link inline, a functionality that requires TWO LINES of code change in core (minus the admin settings), and I will come to this next :

   From ed_readmore.module (only an excerpt) :

   /**
    *
    * Fix "read more" flag
    * From the most excellent angry donuts site: http://www.angrydonuts.com/the_nuisance_of_the_read_more_fl
    * From author: Note that I'm using a lot of arguments to l() -- I'm telling it to provide an 'absolute' 
    * path, because these teasers often go out to RSS, and providing an absolute path is much, much safer.
    */ 
   function ed_readmore_nodeapi(&$node, $op, $teaser, $page) {
     if ($op == 'view') {
       if (variable_get('ed_readmore_readmore_tweak', ED_READMORE_READMORE_TWEAK_DEFAULT) && $teaser && $node->readmore) {
         // deal with broken strrpos on php4
         if (_ed_readmore_is_php4()) {
           $find_last = '_ed_readmore_strrpos_string';
         }
         else {
           $find_last = 'strrpos';
         }
         $readmore_url = l(variable_get('ed_readmore_text', t(ED_READMORE_TEXT_DEFAULT)), "node/$node->nid", NULL, NULL, NULL, TRUE, TRUE);
         $node->readmore = false;
         //
         // since we are blowing away some of the implicit info ($node->readmore) let's remember that this was a teaser
         $node->is_teaser = TRUE;
         if (variable_get('ed_readmore_readmore_inline', ED_READMORE_READMORE_INLINE_DEFAULT)) {
           $read_more = "<span class='read-more'>" . $readmore_url . "</span>";
           // int strrpos ( string haystack, string needle [, int offset] )
           // substr_replace ( mixed string, string replacement, int start [, int length] )
           $marker_to_insert_at = '</p>';
           $final_p_pos = $find_last($node->teaser, $marker_to_insert_at); // php4 gotcha - will search only for first char of marker!  (supports only single char search)
           if (!($final_p_pos ===FALSE)) {
             $node->teaser = substr_replace($node->teaser, $read_more, $final_p_pos, 0); // account for length of </p> string
           } else {
             $node->teaser .= $read_more; // not found, so just append it
           }
         }
         else { // just add it at the bottom of the teaser, please.
           $node->teaser .= "<div class='read-more'>" . $readmore_url . "</div>";
         }
       }
     }
   
   }
   
   ###################################################
   #
   # DESCRIPTION:
   # This function returns the last occurance of a string,
   # rather than the last occurance of a single character like
   # strrpos does. It also supports an offset from where to
   # start the searching in the haystack string.
   #
   # ARGS:
   # $haystack (required) -- the string to search upon
   # $needle (required) -- the string you are looking for
   # $offset (optional) -- the offset to start from
   #
   # RETURN VALS:
   # returns integer on success
   # returns false on failure to find the string at all
   #
   # lifted from http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.strrpos.php#67559
   #
   ###################################################
   
   function _ed_readmore_strrpos_string($haystack, $needle, $offset = 0) {
     if(trim($haystack) != "" && trim($needle) != "" && $offset <= strlen($haystack)) {
       $last_pos = $offset;
       $found = false;
       while(($curr_pos = strpos($haystack, $needle, $last_pos)) !== false) {
         $found = true;
         $last_pos = $curr_pos + 1;
       }
       if($found) {
         return $last_pos - 1;
       }
       else {
         return false;
       }
     }
     else {
       return false;
     }
   }
   

   Wereas all that is required in core is TWO lines changed in node.module in the function node_prepare() :

   Here I am not checking if the teaser is actually different than the content. That's the line that's missing.
   (On my web site the teaser is always different from the body).

   function node_prepare($node, $teaser = FALSE) {
     $node->readmore = (strlen($node->teaser) < strlen($node->body));
     if ($teaser == FALSE) {
       $node->body = check_markup($node->body, $node->format, FALSE);
     }
     else {
       // ******** Modified by Caroline Schnapp *********
       if ($node->readmore) {
      $node->teaser .= '&nbsp;'. l(t('Read&nbsp;more&nbsp;&rarr;'),  'node/' . $node->nid, array('class' => 'thereIsMoreToRead', 'title' => 'Read the rest of this posting.'), NULL, NULL, TRUE, TRUE);
      }
      // ******** END OF MODIFICATION ***************
       $node->teaser = check_markup($node->teaser, $node->format, FALSE);
     }
     return $node;
   }
   

   On the next line (next to the modification), the existing call to check_markup takes care of adding the ending </p> or </div> (or whatever) to make the HTML of the teaser correct and valid, if such tag is necessary.

Caroline
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How do you then give the system/site admin the option

to offer or not offer a separate text box for teaser
which by default can be collapsible/non-collapsible
and can / cannot contain thumbnail image

and also allow the specific needs of specific pages to show the teasers ?

These are the options for the admin only who already tackles a plethora of more than 100 or more options. The enduser or the visitor will not be seeing so much options :-)

Having enabled the admin with various options is what drupal flexibilty is all about, in my humble opinion.

Like to know what your exact suggestion is in this matter.

Best regards

Thanks Chill35

Yes thats confusing to me too, I mentioned it in that page.
Probably the admin can have the option to define human readable name of teaser as 'teaser' or'summary' or 'abc' or 'xyz' or whatever for her/his installation of drupal ......

Chill, since you are a long time user can you take this recommendation for teaser [ "everything you need a teaser to be." ] to appropriate ears and then probably its implementation ?
http://drupal.org/node/134657

Best regards