Wordpress adding extra html coding to my data on saving

Question

Around the time of WordPress 3.9, I implemented a custom post type with repeating wysiwyg meta-boxes. (cobbled together and adapted from code found here: http://www.kathyisawesome.com/426/multiple-wordpress-wysiwyg-visual-editors/). It worked perfectly and I was happy.

Fast forward several months, and a site which has been auto-updated to WP 4.1.1 now is doing very strange things on SAVE while using the wysiwyg editor.

What I enter (and then check the html source) is this:

<p>this is the main section bullets</p><ol><li>one</li><li>two</li><li>three</li></ol>

But what Wordpress ends up saving is this:

<p>this is the main section bullets</p><p> </p><ol><ol><li>one</li></ol></ol><p> </p><ol><ol><li>two</li></ol></ol><p> </p><ol><ol><li>three</li></ol></ol><p> </p>

I should note this strange formatting does NOT happen with the built in WP editor at the top of every post, it only happens in the wysiwyg metaboxes that I added in my plugin.

What changed in the intervening versions of WordPress? I know this may be somewhat broad, but if anyone has seen anything similar or can point me in any direction, to any known issues of this sort, I would be very grateful.

Answer 1

IT turned out to be less hassle to just recreate my plugin using the latest and greatest code available here:

https://github.com/helgatheviking/WP-Alchemy-Holy-Grail-Theme

And it also turned out to have something to do with the filter being applied to the editor. This:

<?php echo esc_html( wp_richedit_pre($mb->get_the_value()) ); ?>

was the problem, replacing it ultimately with this solved it:

<?php echo esc_html(html_entity_decode( $mb->get_the_value() ) ); ?>

Hope this helps someone else out.