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How to get an article description or excerpt within Expression Engine

I saw in Expression Engine I can use {embed:title} and {site_name} variables, but now I need a variable to pull an excerpt or description of the article itself. Is there such a variable/tag?

Solution

  • ExpressionEngine tags are based solely on custom fields which you yourself have defined. So in the field group for your "articles" channel, you'll have some fields, maybe {article_summary}, {article_body}, {article_image}, etc. To display your summary, just use {article_summary} in your template.

    I'm assuming that you're coming from something like WordPress maybe, where every piece of content has the_content() and the_excerpt() ... aside from a handful of global variables, and some fields which are universal to all entries (like {title}, {entry_date}, etc), ExpressionEngine isn't like that. You define what fields you use for each channel - you have complete control.