Displaying recent post excerpts on static front page

Question

I'm trying to display a static front page with recent posts at the bottom. Specifically, I want to display just an excerpt from the recent posts, as would be returned by the_content() if I had a dynamic front page. What I've managed so far is to display the front page with the recent posts, but it's displaying the complete content of the posts not just the excerpt. I don't want to generate my own excerpts because I want them to be consistent with the excerpts that appear on the category and archive pages.

This is (a simplified version of) my front-page.php file at the moment:

<?php get_header(); ?>
<?php the_post(); ?>

<!-- This block is modified slightly from page.php -->
<a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>">Home</a> &gt; <?php the_title(); ?>
<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
<?php the_content(); ?>

<div id="recent_posts">
<h2>Latest entries</h2>
<?php
$recent_posts_query = new WP_Query(array('post_type' => 'post', 'posts_per_page' => 5));

while ($recent_posts_query->have_posts())
{
$recent_posts_query->the_post();
?>
<div class="post">
<h3><?php echo the_title(); ?></h3>
<p>by <?php the_author(); ?></p>
<?php the_content(); ?>
</div>
<?php
}
?>
</div>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

How can I get the_content() to return just the excerpt? (Most of my posts have a <!--more--> tag in them, and those that don't I want appearing in full as they are short posts.)

EDIT: Tried using the_excerpt() but it returns an auto-generated excerpt even if the post contains a <!--more--> tag.

Answer 1

I've found the solution. According to https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/the_content#Overriding_Archive.2FSingle_Page_Behavior, one must add

global $more;
$more = 0;

before the call to the_content(). So now my inner loop reads:

<?php
$recent_posts_query = new WP_Query(array('post_type' => 'post', 'posts_per_page' => 5));

while ($recent_posts_query->have_posts())
{
$recent_posts_query->the_post();
?>
<div class="post">
<h3><?php echo the_title(); ?></h3>
<p>by <?php the_author(); ?></p>
<?php
global $more;
$more = 0;
the_content();
?>
</div>
<?php
}
?>