Relation field in category workaround?

I'm having items with multiple related items to them.
In category view I can display relation field with titles of all related items, but that creates a long list in some cases.

Is there a way to display only 1 custom text or picture for each main item in category view, even if there are multiple related items?

The idea is just to show if there are some related items or not in category view, but not to show the titles of all of them. With the item HTML setting of the Relation field I can set some custom picture to be shown, but if there are more than one related items the picture repeats corresponding number of times, but I want to have only 1 picture.

I hope this makes sense

Hello,
what about display a total count of items (related) via relation field

To do this

1. In Relation field configuration use something basic to make it fast e.g. in custom HTML parameter leave it blank (save it and it will turn into some defaults)

2. use a duplicated template and add your relation field into any template position renderonly

3. edit category_items.php and place at appropriate place:
NOTE: above add text "RELATED_ITEMS_COUNT" to your Joomla language strings e.g. in Joomla language manager add it to language overrides, or if you do not want translations replace it above with e.g. "Content Related Total"

NOTE: above $item maybe $items[$i] depends on your template

NOTE: above 'myrelationfieldname' is the name not the label of your relation field

Regards

Thank you for the help. For some reason it always displays 0. However that is not exactly what i'm looking to achieve. With this method i will always have something there even if it is 0. I need the field to display a picture or default text only if there is related item.

Hello,
the above code had an error it used ->values correct is ->value

also what you asked is simple, see the above code (i updated)
place what ever you need in there

Now the code works with "$items[$i]", but only if I want to show the count like that: But with this: it always shows "no related items" as a result.
I had to remove JText to make it work: now it is showing if there are related items or not.

Big Thanks for the great support as always!

But i have another problem now. If the related item is at finish publishing date state(expired) the indication is still there because the item state in the relation field is [P] maybe? Is there a way to hide the indication if the item is expired?

Well
you could check if items have expired in the template but i am thinking , it is best to add a built-in variable to the relation field ! it makes more sense because the relation field already examines this