How to add Reading Time to Elementor Single Post Template Without a Plugin

Custom Code, Elementor
September 11, 2020
5:55 pm
2 minutes read

According to this Medium article reading time is calculated total number of words in a post divide by 200.

Now coming straight to the point.

The initial part of the code is taken from the above-mentioned article and I give full credits to the author

How to calculate the reading time?

//Estimated reading time
function reading_time() 
{
$content = get_post_field('post_content', $post->ID);
$word_count = str_word_count(strip_tags($content));
$readingtime = ceil($word_count/200);

if ($readingtime == 1) 
{
$timer = " minute";
} 
else 
{
$timer = " minutes";
}
$totalreadingtime = $readingtime . $timer;
echo $totalreadingtime;
 // Using echo here to print the time
}

How to convert it into a shortcode and use it on the single post template?

function readingtime_shortcode()
{
	ob_start();
	get_reading_time();
	return ob_get_clean(); 
}
add_shortcode('Reading-time', 'readingtime_shortcode');

Full code to be placed into a .php file

<?php 

//Estimated reading time 
function reading_time() 
{
 $content = get_post_field('post_content', $post->ID);
 $word_count = str_word_count(strip_tags($content));
 $readingtime = ceil($word_count/200);

 if ($readingtime == 1) 
{
 $timer = " minute";
} 
 else 
{
 $timer = " minutes";
}
 $totalreadingtime = $readingtime . $timer;
 echo $totalreadingtime;
 // Using echo to print the time
}

wp_reset_postdata();

// Creating a shortcode
function readingtime_shortcode()
{
	ob_start();
	get_reading_time();
	return ob_get_clean(); 
}

add_shortcode('Reading-time', 'readingtime_shortcode');