Excerpt not alway available

Question

I have a php function that should print last three posts with title and excerpt.

For the first post printed there is no excerpt.

Here is the code:

  $posts = wp_get_recent_posts( array('numberposts' => 3, 'post_status' => 'publish')  );
  foreach ($posts as $post)
  {
    setup_postdata($post);
    echo "<h2 style='font-size:18px'>".$post['post_title']."</h2>";
    if($post['post_excerpt']) 
         echo $post['post_excerpt']." <a href='".get_permalink($post['ID'])."'     style='font-size: 17px;'><b>Continue...</b></a>";
    else echo 'no excerpt';
    echo "<br><br />";
  }

I want to show the excerpt for the first post printed too (the last posted one). What is wrong in my code? Why it's not working for the first post printed?

Answer 1

Excerpt is stored in database and available in post object only if it was added manually in post editor. Do not access such properties directly, use template tags instead - get_the_excerpt() in this case.