Limit number of characters with Django Template filter

Question

I am trying to output the first 255 characters of a description on a list of items and am looking for a method to get that.

Example: I have a variable that contains 300

Answer 1

If the "my_variable" is a string, you can take advantage of the slice filter, which treats the string as a list of characters. If it's a set of words, the rough equivilant is truncatewords - but that doesn't quite sound like your need.

truncatewordsalso adds an ellipsis ... at the end of the truncated result.

Usage would be something like

{{ my_variable|slice:":255" }}