How to include line-breaks in the_excerpt?

Question

how can I include a line-break inside the_excerpt. I’ve modified the length and the more-button via my functions.php. I’m using teaser for every blog-entry and sometimes it looks a bit ugly, that there no line-breaks included.

Answer 1

Same to Johannes Pille's solution, the bellowing solution should be more adaptive.

In detail:

• override function wp_trim_excerpt
• remove old filter and add new custom new filter

Here's full code:

// append to themes/{your_theme}/functions.php

define('EXCERPT_RARELY', '{[}]');
define('EXCERPT_BR', nl2br(PHP_EOL));

function so306588_trim_excerpt_custom($text = '')
{
    add_filter('the_content', 'so306588_trim_excerpt_custom_mark', 6);

    // get through origin filter
    $text = wp_trim_excerpt($text);

    remove_filter('the_content', 'so306588_trim_excerpt_custom_mark', 6);

    return so306588_trim_excerpt_custom_restore($text);
}

function so306588_trim_excerpt_custom_mark($text)
{
    $text = nl2br($text);
    return str_replace(EXCERPT_BR, EXCERPT_RARELY, $text);
}

function so306588_trim_excerpt_custom_restore($text)
{
    return str_replace(EXCERPT_RARELY, EXCERPT_BR, $text);
}

// remove default filter
remove_filter('get_the_excerpt', 'wp_trim_excerpt');

// add custom filter
add_filter('get_the_excerpt', 'so306588_trim_excerpt_custom');

Answer 2

There is no filter that would allow you to set allowable tags not to be removed by the_excerpt(). Arguably a shortcoming of the core.

Anyhow, the actual excerpt generation does not happen in that template tag but entirely elsewhere:

Excerpts are generated by the function wp_trim_excerpt(), inside of which the excerpt filters you are already using (excerpt_length and excerpt_more) are applied and which calls wp_trim_words(), which in turn calls upon wp_strip_all_tags(). All three functions are located in wp-includes/formatting.php

Hence in the absence of a filter for the case and the inevitability of your excerpt running through wp_strip_all_tags(), the only possibility to preserve some tags is adding a custom replacement function for wp_trim_excerpt():

function wpse67498_wp_trim_excerpt( $text = '' ) {
    $raw_excerpt = $text;

    if ( '' == $text ) {
        $text = get_the_content( '' );
        $text = strip_shortcodes( $text );
        $text = apply_filters( 'the_content', $text );
        $text = str_replace( ']]>', ']]>', $text );
        $excerpt_length = apply_filters( 'excerpt_length', 55 );
        $excerpt_more = apply_filters( 'excerpt_more', ' ' . '[...]' );

        $allowable = '<br>';
        $text = preg_replace( '@<(script|style)[^>]*?>.*?</\\1>@si', '', $text );
        $text = trim( strip_tags( $text, $allowable ) );

        if ( 'characters' == _x( 'words', 'word count: words or characters?' )
            && preg_match( '/^utf\-?8$/i', get_option( 'blog_charset' ) ) )
        {
            $text = trim( preg_replace( "/[\n\r\t ]+/", ' ', $text ), ' ' );
            preg_match_all( '/./u', $text, $words_array );
            $words_array = array_slice( $words_array[0], 0, $num_words + 1 );
            $sep = '';
        } else {
            $words_array = preg_split( "/[\n\r\t ]+/", $text, $num_words + 1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY );
            $sep = ' ';
        }

        if ( count( $words_array ) > $excerpt_length ) {
            array_pop( $words_array );
            $text = implode( $sep, $words_array );
            $text = $text . $excerpt_more;
        } else {
            $text = implode( $sep, $words_array );
        }
    }

    return apply_filters( 'wp_trim_excerpt', $text, $raw_excerpt );
}

remove_filter( 'get_the_excerpt', 'wp_trim_excerpt');
add_filter( 'get_the_excerpt', 'wpse67498_wp_trim_excerpt' );

Answer 3

wouldn't it be simpler to apply the_content filter to the excerpt?

i only use this occasionally, right within the template file:

$excerpt = apply_filters('the_content',  ( get_post(get_the_ID())->post_excerpt) );
echo $excerpt;

Answer 4

At the moment, it is possible to use the_excerpt() funtion to display the excerpt with line breaks. But if you like to return the result you can use for that purpose a function like this:

function get_the_excerpt_theme() {
    $excerpt = get_the_excerpt();
    $excerpt = apply_filters( 'the_excerpt', $excerpt );
    return $excerpt;
}

It applies a filters to the excerpt using apply_filters('the_excerpt', $excerpt ) like in the wp function the_excerpt() but returns the string without displaying it.

Also, if you like to allow only line breaks in the excerpt, you can add $excerpt = strip_tags($excerpt,'<br>') below the line apply_filters.

Hope it helps!

Answer 5

A simple solution is replacing line breaks before WordPress would replace them. I used an arbitrary selected character from the Unicode private area as it is not expected to appear in any content, also if it appears it is dedicated to be private use to indicate that handling is not standardised.

add_filter('wp_trim_words', function($text, $num_words, $more, $original_text) {
    static $filtering;
    if ( $filtering ) {
        return $text;
    }
    $filtering = true;
    
    // Random character from a unicode private use area
    $private_use_char = "\u{101425}";
    
    $text = str_replace( ["\n\r", "\n", "\r"], $private_use_char, $original_text);
    $text = wp_trim_words($text, $num_words, $more);
    $text = str_replace($private_use_char, "\n", $text); // or str_replace($private_use_char, "<br>", $text)
    
    $filtering = false;
    return $text;
}, 10, 4);

Note that this will result in "\n" characters in the output of the_excerpt() and get_the_excerpt(), so you probably want to call wpautop() on that before using it in HTML. Alternatively you can simply replace $private_use_char with <br> instead of \n as indicated by the comment.

Answer 6

also could just use PHP's nl2br() function:

echo nl2br(get_the_excerpt());

-- or --

nl2br(the_excerpt());