trim a content

[compact cobalt]

in my template i have this line:
emph(secondaryHeadingContent)
now I want to trim the output to a certain length. there is str.trim(), but how do it convert the content to a string? these all fail, mainly because secondaryHeadingContent is of type content, not string:

#str(emph(secondaryHeadingContent)).trim(at: 3) 
#emph(secondaryHeadingContent).trim(at: 3)
#emph(secondaryHeadingContent.text.trim(at: 3))
#emph(secondaryHeadingContent.trim(at: 3)```

[slow plover]

are you looking for slice?

#let a-string = "this is actually a string"
Look at this #emph(str(a-string).slice(0, 3)) slice \
#let a-content = [this is actually *content*]
These are `a-content`'s children: #a-content.fields()

[compact cobalt]

same problem: I can't access the text of my content.

``` gives me `(text: "Lorem Ipsum")`
but 
```    #secondaryHeadingContent.text``` throws an error: `Content does not contain field "text"`

[scenic ember]

silly workaround: #secondaryHeadingContent.fields().at("text")?

[slow plover]

Have you seen [this](#quick-questions message)? There's also repr but you don't really do yourself any favours there.
can you give some more context?

[compact cobalt]

what I actually just want to do is to shorten a content's text down to N characters, for which @slow plover pointed out that I probably need to use str.slice() – but I'm not getting that far.

I don't understand this error. is it legit?:

      #secondaryHeadingContent.text
    }

yields an error: content doesn't contain field "text"

[scenic ember]

it looks like the field "text" is only available if the content has no formattig

[open pendant]

correct

you cant generally obtain any kind of content as a string

after all, such content could be an image, for example

there are some workarounds to try to tackle that

but basically you'd have to write a function which goes through the content tree recursively

if the content is a sequence ([*a* _a_].func()) , i.e. has a children field, then you'll have to apply the function to each child and join the results
if the content is text, just .text (base case)

if the content has .body, apply the function to .body

otherwise you just return empty string cuz u dont know what to do