Trim excerpt to first paragraph

Question

I'm trying to trim the excerpt to only the first paragraph by adding filters to my theme's functions.php file. I have this working fine on my local machine (using WAMP), but on my actually web server it outputs the entire post rather than the paragraph I'm expecting. Here's what I have to trim the excerpt:

// Set the excerpt length to more than necessary
function triangle_x_excerpt_length($length)
{
    return 999;
}
add_filter('excerpt_length', 'triangle_x_excerpt_length', 999);

// Get the first paragraph of the article
function triangle_x_excerpt($text, $raw_excerpt)
{
    if(!$raw_excerpt)
    {
        $content = apply_filters( 'the_content', get_the_content() );
        $text = substr( $content, 0, strpos( $content, '</p>' ) + 4 );
    }
    $text = preg_replace("/<img[^>]+\>/i", "", $text); 
    return $text;
}
add_filter('get_the_excerpt', 'triangle_x_excerpt', 20, 2);

// Remove read more link at end of excerpt
function new_excerpt_more($more)
{
    return '';
}
add_filter('excerpt_more', 'new_excerpt_more');

Answer 1

You can match this with regEx and easily choose the amount of paragraphs to return.

// in context
function triangle_x_excerpt( $text, $raw_excerpt ) {

    $content = apply_filters( 'the_content', get_the_content() );

    $text    = ( preg_match( sprintf( '~(<p>.+?</p>){%d}~i', 1 ), $content, $matches ) ) ? $matches[ 0 ] : $content;

    return preg_replace( "/<img[^>]+\>/i", "", $text );
}

---

$text = prefix_get_p( $content, 1);

---

function prefix_get_p($content, $max = 1)
{
    $max = is_numeric($max) ? absint($max) : 1;

    return (preg_match(sprintf('~(<p>.+?</p>){%d}~i', $max), $content, $matches)) ? $matches[0] : $content;
}

echo "Limit 1" . PHP_EOL;
echo prefix_get_p('<p>aaaaa</p><p>bbbbb</p><p>ccccc</p><p>dddddd</p><p>eeeeeee</p><p>ffffff</p>', 1); // <p>aaaaa</p>

echo "Limit 3" . PHP_EOL;
echo prefix_get_p('<p>aaaaa</p><p>bbbbb</p><p>ccccc</p><p>dddddd</p><p>eeeeeee</p><p>ffffff</p>', 3); // <p>aaaaa</p><p>bbbbb</p><p>ccccc</p>

echo "Limit 2" . PHP_EOL;
echo prefix_get_p('<p>aaaaa</p><p>bbbbb</p><p>ccccc</p><p>dddddd</p><p>eeeeeee</p><p>ffffff</p>', 2); // <p>aaaaa</p><p>bbbbb</p>