Query database and show latest 3 articles from __content

Question

I need to show the latest 3 content items from the database.

I want to show the:

• Intro Image
• Article title (with a link to the article)
• Published Date
• Intro Copy (limited to 100 characters)

I have written the following, which is working but I need to json_decode the images in order to show the introimage:

<div class="row" id="interested-in">
    <div class="col-12">

        <h2>Heading Here</h2>
        <div class="row">

            <?php

            use Joomla\CMS\Language\Text;
            use Joomla\CMS\Date\Date;
            use Joomla\CMS\Factory;

            $db = JFactory::getDbo();


            $query = $db->getQuery(true);

            $query->select('*');
            $query->from('#__content');
            $query->order('id DESC ');
            $query->limit('3');

            $db->setQuery((string)$query);
            $res = $db->loadObjectList();



            $i = 0;
            foreach ($res as $r) {
                $introimage = $r->images;
                $id = $r->id;
                $title = $r->title;
                $published = $r->publish_up;
                $intro = $r->introtext;
                if (++$i > 3) break;

                echo '<div class="col-lg-4 col-md-6">';
                echo '<div class="card">';
                if ($introimage == null || $introimage == '/') {
                    echo '<div class="card-img-top holding-image" alt="' . $title . '"></div>';
                } else {
                    echo '<img class="card-img-top" src="' . $introimage . '" alt="' . $r->title . '"/>';
                }
                echo '<div class="card-body">';
                echo '<a href="' . JRoute::_('index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=' . $id) . '">';
                echo '<h5 class="card-title mb-4">'.$title.'</h5>';
                echo '</a>';
                echo '<time datetime="'. $published . '" class="mb-2 text-muted">'.$published.'</time>';
                echo '<p class="card-text">'.mb_strimwidth("$intro", 0, 80, "...").'</p>';
                echo '</div>';
                echo '</div>';
                echo '</div>';
            } ?>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>

I also need to echo the date in a different format, I've tried

echo '<time datetime="'. $published . '" class="mb-2 text-muted">'.$published->format(Text::_('DATE_FORMAT_LC')).'</time>';

But that gives me an error:

Call to a member function format() on string

Answer 1

Resolved this as follows:

In foreach, for the intro image, I replaced

$introimage = $r->images;

with

$introimage = json_decode($r->images)->image_intro;

For the date formatting, I added:

use Joomla\CMS\HTML\HTMLHelper;
use Joomla\CMS\Language\Text;

and replaced

echo '<time datetime="' . $published . '" class="mb-2 text-muted">' . $published.'</time>';

with

echo '<time datetime="' . $published . '" class="mb-2 text-muted">' . HtmlHelper::date($published, Text::_('DATE_FORMAT_LC')) . '</time>';